[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

Hey guys, welcome back to the business show. This is Ted your host speaking. Today we have my friend Harlan Hammack, who will be teaching us how to identify and solve the right problems in our business. Harlan is a highly sought after business coach who specializes in organizational change and leadership, he helps entrepreneurs identify and solve the right problems in their business by implementing systematic and time tested methods, and to navigate the challenges that companies face when undergoing major organizational changes. In today’s episode, Harlan shares his tips on ditching the chaos by simplifying strategizing and systemising what needs to be done, why it’s important to have systems in place in your business and a time tested method and how we can identify and solve the right problems in our business. Now, the show notes and resources are available online at Ted teo.com at tto.com. And if you enjoyed the show, don’t forget to subscribe and to leave a review on your favorite podcast directory. Now as a way to say thank you and to show my appreciation to you guys. If you actually do subscribe and leave a review on Apple iTunes by the end of September, then you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. Now let’s dive right in. Hi Harland. Thank you for joining us today.

 

01:04

No thank you for the invite. I’m looking forward to this.

 

01:06

Okay, Harlan. This is a very easy icebreaker. Could you share with us who is Harlan Hammack when he isn’t working?

 

01:13

when I’m not working? I I feel like I’m always working. But there are a few things I do enjoy. My wife and I we love the outdoors. We ride motorcycles. I have a jeep. So we do a lot of off roading for wheeling, love camping, doing things outdoors. So yeah, pretty active.

 

01:31

Wow, it’s so nice to hear that you’re so active. Okay, Harlan, let’s dive right in. I understand that you are a professional consultant and coach with over 25 years worth of experience helping your clients, could you share with us how you got started in this career path. And what led you to start your own company I before he sure.

 

01:48

I think I kind of fell into the career. My wife was a consultant. And so she introduced me to the company she was working with and I ended up hiring on with them started off in the training and area of the business, doing corporate training, developing training for companies, and then realize that a lot of times what the client was asking for was not really training related, they had problems with their business processes, or they didn’t have systems in place. It was a change, organizational change that they really needed. So I transferred over into the organizational change management side. And so we would work with companies that were undergoing some major change, merger acquisition, which I know you’re you’re comfortable with. companies that were undergoing a process reengineering or restructuring of their business, a big software implementation. And we would work with the executive team to help them understand the change all the impacts of that change. And then help them communicate the change and lead their people through the change. So they were as productive after as they were before. But then with working with this company and traveling all over the world, I realized that they were making a lot of money, right? They were building me out at a very high hourly rate. And I was only making a fraction of that. So I decided that I wanted to go independent. So my wife and I, we founded I before he and first as a consulting branch, and we would start doing organizational change management focusing just on that discipline. And so we worked all over the world, right? US, Canada, Mexico, UK, Germany, been to a lot of different countries helping and after a while, that was since 2003, that we found the company, I got tired of getting on a plane every Monday and every Friday, because after a while it gets to be almost like riding the bus. So I decided I wanted to stop traveling and focus on the aspect that I liked, which is working with the executives, helping them be better decision makers that are communicators better leaders. So I stopped traveling, and I started it for coaching. And so I’ve been coaching small to midsize businesses to help them be better leaders. And that’s, that’s where I’m at now. And I’m loving it having a great time. All

 

03:59

in what is it for you if you stand for is there meaning behind it?

 

04:03

in school and I don’t know, in Singapore if it’s the same, but here in the US schools, we used to have a mnemonic that we would learn right I before e except after C. And as long as you kept that mnemonic in mind, at least with American English words anyways, if you want to spell a word 90 95% of the time it would work out correctly. Right? Well, same thing in business are certain things you have to do in a certain order and do it consistently. And if you do then 90 95% of the time you will be successful. So we just thought it was a cool name for the business.

 

04:37

Holland from this story alone, I can tell that you’re a very systematic thinker. And this probably has rubbed off in your teaching methodologies as well. Could you share with us? What advice would you have for an entrepreneur who’s maybe struggling to identify and solve the right problems into business? Do you have any tips or tools that you can share?

 

04:52

One of the programs I’m starting up right now is called ditch the chaos, right because we create a lot of chaos in our lives by trying to do too much or trying to do too many things ourselves or trying to do things too fast. So one of the things I would say is simplify. Right, I focus on three key areas. Simplify, strategize, and systematize. Simplify. Who are you? What do you do? Who do you do it for? And why never lose sight of that? Right? Focus on the thing that you’re good at and and dive deep on that rather than being broad. Go deep into their your discipline. So who are you? What do you do? Who do you do it for? The next is to strategize come up with strategies to help you achieve those goals. Right? You need a strategy. Either, you know, a lot of people put together a business plan. I’m talking about a strategic plan. Where are you now? Where do you want to be? And how do you plan to get there, you need a strategy for gaining customers a strategy for attracting hiring and retaining great employees, you need a strategy for your profit, how to make your profit margins and set that profit aside, and things like that. And then systematize, anytime you can implement a system in your business, it takes the worry out of it, right a system is kind of like a recipe, if if I follow a recipe for chocolate cake, I will end up with a chocolate cake. And if I give you that recipe, and you follow it to the letter, you’ll end up with an identical chocolate cake. If somewhere along the line, you ended up with cookies of some kind of sugar cookies, then either you didn’t follow the recipe, or I gave you the wrong recipe, right? Those are the only two things that go wrong, but it’s easy to identify. Same thing in business, if you have the systems in place, and everybody follows the system, you will have a predictable, measurable output. And if something goes wrong, you can go back to the exact step and know what went wrong and know what to fix. If everybody in your business is doing things their own way. There’s no way to know how to make efficiencies or change those processes. So put the systems in place, teach everybody how to do those, follow them to the letter, and then you have a measurable repeatable outcome.

 

07:06

So guys, as Harlan just shared, we have to simplify, strategize and systematize. What are the bottlenecks, they are facing your business right now? Maybe you could actually apply the system and see where you can get you. Now Harlan, I know that you develop a framework called the Rosco framework as well, can you walk us through this framework? What is it for? And how can an entrepreneur adopt this as part of his day to day?

 

07:25

Sure, Roscoe came out of working with a few clients who were doing exactly what I just said they they didn’t have any systems in place. They would set goals but they’ve never actually achieved the goals. And so Roscoe is a tool to help you achieve the goals. Okay, Roscoe is an acronym, it is our s s. c o. r stands for the result that you’re after. When you set a goal, it isn’t the goal that motivates you. It’s the things that come along with that goal. Think about auto racing, right? The goal is to win the race that get the checkered flag. But winning isn’t what motivates you. It’s all the things that come along with the winning, right? The points, the standing, the money, the girl, the champagne, those are the things that keep you motivated. So working with my clients, we define what is the goal? But then what do you hope to get out of that? Well, how will your life be different if you achieve that goal? So that’s the result once you set the result, the first SS for strategy, what strategy can you use to achieve that goal? Right, and there’s multiple ways you can do it. If I want to lose weight, there are multiple ways I can do that eat properly exercise or get medical intervention, right? If I want to increase my revenue in business, I can do that by raising the prices on my products and services, or implement some other efficiencies in the business right to reduce my costs. So come up with multiple strategies. And then for each one of those strategies, you put in a system, what are the steps I need to implement in order to implement that strategy? The C stands for controls or checkpoints. I’m a pilot. When I fly anywhere outside my local area, I file a flight plan that says Where am I now? Where do I want to be in? How do I plan to get there? And I measure my progress along the way, you have to do the same thing in business? How are you going to measure your progress? How are we going to measure to see if you’re actually on track to achieve that goal. That’s what the C is. And then oh, is a part that most people ignore or forget about oh is the outcome, which is different from the result. The result is what you get from achieving your goal, the outcome are those unexpected or unintended consequences of achieving your goal? If I lose weight, follow my plan, I will lose weight. One of the outcomes is I have to buy new clothes, right? So I have to weigh that against the result. Is that Is it worth it? In business if I want to increase my revenue, I can do that by raising the prices of my products and services. But one of the outcomes is I may lose customers I have to weigh that against the result. And as long as it works fine if not, go back and change your strategy or change the system. You never change the result because that’s what you want. That’s what’s motivating you. But change your strategy and change your system and then put in new measurements and track your progress. Harlan,

 

10:17

I like to pick your brain a little bit more about Rosco framework. If an entrepreneur is struggling and facing some issues growing their business, where should they apply to Rosco framework to where should we start looking?

 

10:27

Usually with my clients, we start with a strategic plan, right? Where are you now? Where do you want to be? From that strategic plan? We identify 90 days in the next 90 days this quarter, what do you plan to achieve? What are your goals? Once you set the goal then you implement Rasco? What Why do you want to achieve that goal? What do you hope to achieve from from that goal? The strategies, the systems, how are you going to check you know your progress on it. And the outcomes. That’s where Rosco really comes into play. It’s easy to set the goals. But now Rosco gives you a step by step plan on exactly how to make sure you you arrive at that goal I see

 

11:04

can either share a bit more about this? Could you share some examples of your clients and how they apply to Roscoe framework and how things changed before and after the 90 days? Sure. Working with one client,

 

11:16

Mary, she is a bookkeeper. And she had started basically from her home and she had a couple employees working for. But things were growing slowly. For two reasons. Number one she was afraid to to increase her prices, right. She wanted to keep them low. And number two, she did most of the work herself. She would do all the Yeah, exactly. trying to do too much herself and she wouldn’t release things to her employees. So we talked and I asked her why why don’t you share this with your employees? Let them do part of this work? And she said I don’t know if they would be willing to? It’s like we’ll ask right. So we put together a plan, how she could teach them how to do these things, how she would turn it over by a certain date, and then how to track that progress. Well, once she started sharing with her employees, they love taking on the new responsibilities, and that freed up a lot of Mary’s time. So now her employees were growing, doing a lot more, Mary had some time back where she could actually go and do more sales, and actually go out to lunch once in a while. And then as far as raising her prices, same thing, we looked at her prices, she had not raised her prices in quite a while we went through, you know what all she provided to her clients came up with a pricing list. And then she rolled out that pricing and accomplished it within the timeframe that we had originally said she got those prices rolled out and raise her prices by about 25%. And nobody, none of the customers blinked. Right. So it’s not associated crease her prices, she got more work done. Since then, that’s been about a year and a half. Now, she’s doubled the size of her company, her clients, she has more people there in a brand new office space. So really opened the doors for her.

 

13:01

So guys, if you’re struggling or bottleneck in your business, perhaps you can try applying the Roscoe framework, think about the results that you won his strategies that you need, the systems that you need to put in place your controls and your desired outcome when you apply this. So think of a timeline by which you want to apply this by Remember to track yourself and hold yourself accountable. Now back to you Highland, you clearly have a lot of experience helping companies get off their feet, what is one, the first few things a new entrepreneur should actually do when they start their business.

 

13:29

You know, you want to build a team. Everybody wants to be an entrepreneur and do everything themselves, you’re limited to how much time you have in the expert expertise you have in certain areas. Find a team, find a team to help you find a mentor, or a business coach to help you lay out a plan for growth. You don’t want to grow too fast, because it may not be sustainable. So put together a plan on exactly how you plan to grow exactly what products or services you’re going to offer. How you will do that. The Why is very important. Always make sure you you maintain that why. But then build a team. If there’s something that you’re not very good at, bring somebody in to cover that for you. Again, limited number of hours in a day, you can’t do everything. So try to find people that are experienced and can take that load off of you so that you as a business owner can focus on the more high value high quality items, right. I know I’ve seen a lot of business owners that are they’re answering the phones, they’re answering email, they’re sweeping the parking lot. They’re doing all these things that are $10 an hour type jobs. Yeah, you need to hire people to do that. So it frees you up to do the things that you really should be focusing on, which is growing your business.

 

14:43

So Khalid from all New Years of experience. What is one issue that you notice your clients struggling with time and time again,

 

14:49

I would say really three key areas they either have struggles with time with their team, their employees or money on the time side they’re they’re not making good use of their time, so they need to Time management. I like to implement a block calendar where you can actually block out time for the things that are most important, those immovable objects, you have to do this on this day at this time, and then filter everything else in there, there’s plenty time to do things. If you make a plan and follow that plan, the team making sure that you hire the right people, retain the right people, but also train your employees and grow leaders within your organization. Our job as a leader is to grow more leaders, right not to grow more followers. So by delegating, delegating should not just be getting things off your plate, but it should also be an opportunity to teach those employees how to lead, how to take on this responsibility. If you as a leader, show them this is our vision, our mission or purpose. These are our core values, these are our strengths and weaknesses, and then let that employee take over that particular aspect of the job. As long as they follow your core values and your vision. Everything’s fine, right? it’ll it’ll all work out. You don’t want to hire somebody and then micromanage that’s I think that’s one thing we do too often to people, hire them for their skills, and then get out of the way and let them use their skill. And then money. I think people have a lot of problems with money. You know, Mike mccalla Wits wrote the book, profit first. Great book, he says that, you know, we’re taught that revenue minus expenses equals profit. He says that’s backwards, you went into business, not to pay bills, but to make a profit. So he thinks that the equation should be revenue minus profit equals expenses. By focusing on taking your profit first and putting it aside. He helps you keep your expenses down, he helps you keep those expenses that you have to pay out and everything, you’re a lot more efficient with your money. By setting aside that profit, you see that profit account start to grow, it motivates you to continue with your business and do more things to try to make that profit, orange. And so I think that’s one area that businesses don’t do. And then what we found after COVID, a lot of businesses didn’t have what I call it cash runway, right? They didn’t have three to six months, cash reserves set aside to help them. And they panicked, you know, the first thing they did was start pulling money out of things like their marketing budget, to try to save money, well, you have to have money set aside and you can’t disappear from the map. In business, I had a couple clients that doubled the ad, couple clients that actually doubled down on their marketing, they made it through the pandemic and actually came out the other side, bigger, stronger companies, because they were available, they were out there doing the work, you know. So yeah,

 

17:42

it was a very interesting points that you shared, of course, profit is very important. But I think a lot of new entrepreneurs who don’t realize that there’s the other side of the coin that you need to consider, which is cash flow, you may be profitable, but things like your payment, credit dates, if you complete a task. And as a service provider, as a consultant, sometimes it takes a little bit of time for your clients to actually pay you What is a 30 day credit timeline, a 60 day or 90 day this can really affect your cash flow, because they will affect how you can pay your own supplies your own employees. So that’s something that a lot of new entrepreneurs tend to miss out on. And especially a very important as it did catch her on as well. And then you spoke a little bit about growing leaders internally, within organization, a leader pick your brain a little bit more on this point. Sometimes when an organization has good employees, they still look towards the outside to hire someone externally to come in to become a new manager. Now this is contrasted to a position where someone internally within the organization is being promoted. What are your thoughts on this? Usually, when this happens, the internal morale for the employees will be affected. They may feel, for example, that their loyalty is not being rewarded. What are your views on this?

 

18:48

No, that’s a good point actually happened to me a couple times in my career, I was told if I wanted to progress in the company, I had to look outside of my department tried to go somewhere else. They were looking to hire somebody and they were going to bring somebody in from from outside and is very demoralizing. When you work that much for a company you want to, you know, we want to know that we’re growing, that we’re contributing that we’re valuable to a company. So yeah, I would I would absolutely say you should have a plan. Entrepreneurs should have a plan in place for how they were hire, and then grow their their employees into leaders. What’s that succession plan look like? You know what, at what point Can you turn over a little bit more responsibility? At what point do you give them some subordinates that they’re managing? You know, what, how do you how do you grow that? I would definitely tell or employers talk within their company. You have people who are chomping at the bit they want to serve, they want to be leaders, they want to grow within the company, train them, give them the opportunity and then coach them if they do something wrong, coach them right on how to do it right. And again, a lot of it goes back to the core values of the business. We make decisions based on our core values. If If you don’t teach your employees what the core values are for the company, who knows what they’re going to use for their decisions, right? So you want to make sure that they’re following whatever the vision, mission and purpose of your businesses, the core values of your business, give them the result you’re after. And then let them do it, and then coach them to get them, you know, on track if they need to Harlan I fully agree.

 

20:24

So there is a problem. Sometimes when you hire externally, rather than promote internally, promoting your own employees, you may cause them to feel less value. And he may be a bit demoralizing for them, when they have to actually coach somebody who is supposed to be a manager, instead of the other way around, this can really end up creating an environment where employees feel that they’re being rewarded for their loyalty. And this may actually cause issues with retention rates may cause a brain drain at the end of the day. But since we’re talking about organizational change, I know you’re an expert in this area. In fact, you focus down on this area a lot in your career. Could you explain what are the biggest triggers of organizational change? What are some of the biggest issues that can affect or even trade in a company,

 

21:06

I’ll give you a good example of a company we work for years ago, they were doing a major change to their processes, restructuring and a reengineering of their processes. And the man who was leading the change, he was making all the decisions didn’t involve his key employees didn’t involve the more tenured more senior employees in his decision making. And we kept telling him, you know, we really need to communicate better, we need to get your employees involved and engaged. And he said, they will do what I tell them where they will be fired. And we looked at him and said, Well, here’s my prediction, right? If you stay with this line of thinking, you’re going to lose your top employees, because they know their skills can be used somewhere else. So you’ll lose them, you’ll lose the very, very bottom level employees that are just barely hanging on. And you’ll be left with that what we call a mediocre middle. And sure enough, that’s what happened. His top employees left a lot of his bottom employees left, and he was left with this mediocre work team that their productivity went down, you know, the the sales went down, I think he ended up leaving the company or was fired. You have to engage your employees, your employees have as much stake in your success as you do. engage them talk to them, they’ve been doing this work, how can we improve this work? Or what can we do differently here? How do we do this now? How can we make it better, and then use their ideas? Every time you can within the business? What that does is a couple things, it makes them more loyal, it makes them want that process to work out correctly. But then they also have the peer support, where it’s like, Hey, I came up with this process, make sure you’re doing it the right way. Right. So they kind of help each other out. So it really solidifies that business. And as long as you keep the employees with you, yeah,

 

22:55

yeah, I fully agree. Now, Helen, I know you’re very passionate about flying and business. And this has led you to write two books on this subject. But what I am keen to know is how your journey as a pilot has shaped the way you think and react as a business leader and owner.

 

23:07

Yeah, I love flying years ago, my wife and I stopped giving each other gifts, things for presidents, we started giving experiences. So I gave her a Corvette Racing school. And one year she gave me flying lessons. And I love I love flying. It’s very expensive habit or hobby, but I love it. I was on a training flight with my flight instructor just flying around the local area. We’re up at about 7000 8000 feet. And my flight instructor said what is that off your left wing? Well, when I turned to look out the window, he reached over and pulled the throttle out basically put the engine in neutral. Now in those little tiny planes, those little tiny planes, it’s very loud in the cockpit. While I’m looking out to the side, I didn’t see what he did. And suddenly, the engine It sounded like the internet stopped. It was very quiet. And you feel that momentum lifts you out of the seat just a little bit. And I panicked. And I turned to look at him. My eyes were about this big. I looked at him and I said what the heck just happened? And he said you just lost your engine. What do you do now? Well, that’s something that you as a pilot, you need to understand, right? What do you do? How do you work this and what he had taught us in ground school was aviate. Navigate, communicate. aviate means fly the plane. That’s your number one job regardless what else has happened fly the plane, you have to maintain your altitude maintain your airspeed. So you stay aloft as you’re working on whatever the problem happens to be. Same thing in business if something goes wrong, focus on your business. Make sure you maintain the business because if you know you’ve had a fire, let’s say or a flood, if you take your eye off doing business and taking care of your customers, you’re going to fail in your business and that’s not gonna help anybody so aviate always take care of the business. Navigate, you always want to know where you are. In relation to where you should be, and how to get back on course, if you need to, right you need to go where you are at every minute. Same thing in business, you need to know what your numbers are, you need to know where you are on your plan. And if you find yourself off course, how do you get back on course, very critical to know exactly where you are at all times. And then communication. To me, leadership and communication go hand in hand, if you’re not a good effective communicator, you’re not going to be a good effective leader. When something goes wrong in the airplane, I need to communicate with the other passengers, here’s what’s going on. But I have it under control, here’s what I need from you. And here’s how I’m going to handle this situation. Same thing in business, if something goes wrong, your employees are looking to you. If you’re panicking, they’re gonna panic even more. But if you say, here’s where we are, here’s how we’re going to get back on track. And here’s what I need you to do. They will do it, right. But you have to communicate that to them. So aviate, navigate, communicate, I got those three things from flying, and I try to implement those with my clients, every every opportunity. I get

 

26:00

policies, we’re talking about leadership. Let’s talk a little bit about your podcast, if a podcast called the courage to lead, tell us more about it.

 

26:07

And again, this come from working with some of my clients, I had a couple clients that were brand new to being leaders being the boss, and they weren’t making difficult decisions. They weren’t having the difficult conversations that you have to have as a leader. And I told them both, you need to step up, be stronger. And they said, Well, what exactly does that look like? So I went out looking for articles to try to give them some idea of what it meant to be a strong, courageous leader. And that’s where I got the idea for the podcast. So the courage to lead asks the question, what does it take to be a courageous leader? I talked to business leaders, community leaders, entrepreneurs, to ask them, where did you find the courage to achieve your current level of success? Where did you find the courage to walk away from a good paying nine to five job to start your own business? I’ve talked to lawyers, who were very, very accomplished lawyers, and they walked away from that job to start their own consulting business. Where do you find that courage, right? People who have overcome tragedy in their life, a medical tragedy or death or something like that, where did you find the courage to keep going to achieve that level of success? Because I think that’s important as as entrepreneurs, people listening to the podcast here, somebody’s going through something very similar to them, that they overcame that that situation, and it’s like, I can do that, too. And that’s what I’m hoping is that people will listen to the podcast and say, you know, I can be successful too.

 

27:34

Now, I know that there are a lot of styles of leadership. But sometimes the typical problems that new leaders or inexperienced leaders may have is that they may be too assertive, or too consultative. Those are probably the ends of the extreme. Do you have any tips that you can share with an entrepreneur on how they can become a better leader?

 

27:51

I think the confidence comes over time. I don’t know that you can take a college or university course on confidence. I think it happens over time. You do there, there are times when you do have to be consultative, you have to talk to your employees, especially when it has to do I think with the internal processes and procedures, they understand how the process works, they probably see things that are not efficient, and have ideas on how to make those corrections. So that I think you should be consultative with them. When it comes to the vision for the company. Where are you going? The purpose, how you plan to get, you know, to your goals, the financial side of the business, I think you have to be a little bit more directive, as a leader on exactly what that is. I think if you set the goal, and then turn your employees and say, help me achieve this goal, they’ll be with you. If you turn to them and say what do you think we should do? They’re going to lose confidence in you. And that’s the last thing you want. Right? You want to make sure that you maintain that that leadership role and a leader is all at the strategic level, setting the vision, setting the goals, having a plan, and then at the tactical level, turning the employees and say how can we how can we achieve this together?

 

29:05

That was very wealthy at Holland, at the end of the day. It is a balancing act. You need to balance out being assertive and being able to be consultative as well, the better you can balance this and walk the fine line, the better leader you can be.

 

29:17

Absolutely I just talked to uh, I just talked to a guy on my podcast that his company had grown to about 300 employees. They were making money hand over fist. He had the fancy cars, he had the big vacations and everything like that. But his model for leadership was so dictatorial, I guess you’d call it. He was a dictator. He screamed at his employees, he belittled his employees. He blamed them for everything that went wrong in the company. And the business actually almost failed. And he lost his top employees and a lot of his good customers he lost because of the way that he was leading. It took some introspection but he had to turn around and come back to his employees and say I have failed you This is all my fault. And here’s how we’ll make it better. He realized that he wasn’t building a culture. He calls it a culture of love. When you love your family or your team, you’ll do anything to help your team be successful. Right? He wasn’t fostering that within his company. And so to the strength, the courage that he had to turn back around to his employees and say, This is all my fault, I take full responsibility. And here’s how I want to fix this. He’s had to rebuild that company from scratch. And now they’re back to where they were before. But that that took a lot. And it’s it. You’re right, it’s finding that balance. At what point do you stand up and say, I’m the boss, At what time? Do you stand up and say, help? You know, how can how can we help get this together? So that was a that was a lesson for me? Definitely. Oh, that

 

30:45

is very interesting now that we’re connecting the dots, your experience of business, especially in organizational change, and leadership are indeed very core ingredients of what makes a good business. Hmm. Wow.

 

30:59

I think having the courage to admit that you don’t know, having the courage to ask for help, having the courage to seek out a coach or a mentor for the things you don’t need. And I think that’s, that’s one of the most important things. I think too many, too many of us have this idea that the leader has to always be the smartest person in the room. And I think if you’re the smartest person in the room, you need to find a different room. Right? I am always learning from the people that I work with. And I think that’s something that new entrepreneurs need to keep in mind. You don’t have to be the smartest person, but you have to surround yourself with top people, and then give them the space to do their job.

 

31:37

Yeah, it’s okay to say that, I don’t know. But only if you follow up and say, but I will find out.

 

31:42

Absolutely, absolutely. Or turn to your employees and say, I don’t know, help me, you know, how could How can we do this? And you know, that gives him a sense of ownership in the company too. You know, I helped solve a problem with the company, they’re going to be a lot more loyal to you and the business.

 

31:57

So here’s one very important question, how can listeners get in touch review if they need your help?

 

32:02

One of the easiest ways would be my website. The website is IB for EA dash coaching.com. Or they can reach out to me via email. And the email is coach at IB for e.com.

 

32:17

Thanks, Harlan for joining us today. It’s been a real pleasure, though.

 

32:21

This has been fun. I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

 

32:24

Now guys, I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. So why not apply the Rosco system to any problem that you’re solving, whether it’s your business or in your personal life, having a system that encourages you to weigh the outcome with the results and to recalibrate sounds like a good idea to me. If you enjoyed today’s show, why not share it with a fellow entrepreneur who is buying it this way as well. And remember to subscribe to the show, so you’ll be informed every time a new episode comes out. And don’t forget about the Amazon gift voucher giveaway. If you actually do subscribe and leave a review on Apple iTunes by the end of September, and you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. All show notes and resources are available on tatio.com. That’s t d t o.com. 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

Hey guys, welcome back to the business show. This is Ted your host speaking. Today we have my friend Harlan Hammack, who will be teaching us how to identify and solve the right problems in our business. Harlan is a highly sought after business coach who specializes in organizational change and leadership, he helps entrepreneurs identify and solve the right problems in their business by implementing systematic and time tested methods, and to navigate the challenges that companies face when undergoing major organizational changes. In today’s episode, Harlan shares his tips on ditching the chaos by simplifying strategizing and systemising what needs to be done, why it’s important to have systems in place in your business and a time tested method and how we can identify and solve the right problems in our business. Now, the show notes and resources are available online at Ted teo.com at tto.com. And if you enjoyed the show, don’t forget to subscribe and to leave a review on your favorite podcast directory. Now as a way to say thank you and to show my appreciation to you guys. If you actually do subscribe and leave a review on Apple iTunes by the end of September, then you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. Now let’s dive right in. Hi Harland. Thank you for joining us today.

 

01:04

No thank you for the invite. I’m looking forward to this.

 

01:06

Okay, Harlan. This is a very easy icebreaker. Could you share with us who is Harlan Hammack when he isn’t working?

 

01:13

when I’m not working? I I feel like I’m always working. But there are a few things I do enjoy. My wife and I we love the outdoors. We ride motorcycles. I have a jeep. So we do a lot of off roading for wheeling, love camping, doing things outdoors. So yeah, pretty active.

 

01:31

Wow, it’s so nice to hear that you’re so active. Okay, Harlan, let’s dive right in. I understand that you are a professional consultant and coach with over 25 years worth of experience helping your clients, could you share with us how you got started in this career path. And what led you to start your own company I before he sure.

 

01:48

I think I kind of fell into the career. My wife was a consultant. And so she introduced me to the company she was working with and I ended up hiring on with them started off in the training and area of the business, doing corporate training, developing training for companies, and then realize that a lot of times what the client was asking for was not really training related, they had problems with their business processes, or they didn’t have systems in place. It was a change, organizational change that they really needed. So I transferred over into the organizational change management side. And so we would work with companies that were undergoing some major change, merger acquisition, which I know you’re you’re comfortable with. companies that were undergoing a process reengineering or restructuring of their business, a big software implementation. And we would work with the executive team to help them understand the change all the impacts of that change. And then help them communicate the change and lead their people through the change. So they were as productive after as they were before. But then with working with this company and traveling all over the world, I realized that they were making a lot of money, right? They were building me out at a very high hourly rate. And I was only making a fraction of that. So I decided that I wanted to go independent. So my wife and I, we founded I before he and first as a consulting branch, and we would start doing organizational change management focusing just on that discipline. And so we worked all over the world, right? US, Canada, Mexico, UK, Germany, been to a lot of different countries helping and after a while, that was since 2003, that we found the company, I got tired of getting on a plane every Monday and every Friday, because after a while it gets to be almost like riding the bus. So I decided I wanted to stop traveling and focus on the aspect that I liked, which is working with the executives, helping them be better decision makers that are communicators better leaders. So I stopped traveling, and I started it for coaching. And so I’ve been coaching small to midsize businesses to help them be better leaders. And that’s, that’s where I’m at now. And I’m loving it having a great time. All

 

03:59

in what is it for you if you stand for is there meaning behind it?

 

04:03

in school and I don’t know, in Singapore if it’s the same, but here in the US schools, we used to have a mnemonic that we would learn right I before e except after C. And as long as you kept that mnemonic in mind, at least with American English words anyways, if you want to spell a word 90 95% of the time it would work out correctly. Right? Well, same thing in business are certain things you have to do in a certain order and do it consistently. And if you do then 90 95% of the time you will be successful. So we just thought it was a cool name for the business.

 

04:37

Holland from this story alone, I can tell that you’re a very systematic thinker. And this probably has rubbed off in your teaching methodologies as well. Could you share with us? What advice would you have for an entrepreneur who’s maybe struggling to identify and solve the right problems into business? Do you have any tips or tools that you can share?

 

04:52

One of the programs I’m starting up right now is called ditch the chaos, right because we create a lot of chaos in our lives by trying to do too much or trying to do too many things ourselves or trying to do things too fast. So one of the things I would say is simplify. Right, I focus on three key areas. Simplify, strategize, and systematize. Simplify. Who are you? What do you do? Who do you do it for? And why never lose sight of that? Right? Focus on the thing that you’re good at and and dive deep on that rather than being broad. Go deep into their your discipline. So who are you? What do you do? Who do you do it for? The next is to strategize come up with strategies to help you achieve those goals. Right? You need a strategy. Either, you know, a lot of people put together a business plan. I’m talking about a strategic plan. Where are you now? Where do you want to be? And how do you plan to get there, you need a strategy for gaining customers a strategy for attracting hiring and retaining great employees, you need a strategy for your profit, how to make your profit margins and set that profit aside, and things like that. And then systematize, anytime you can implement a system in your business, it takes the worry out of it, right a system is kind of like a recipe, if if I follow a recipe for chocolate cake, I will end up with a chocolate cake. And if I give you that recipe, and you follow it to the letter, you’ll end up with an identical chocolate cake. If somewhere along the line, you ended up with cookies of some kind of sugar cookies, then either you didn’t follow the recipe, or I gave you the wrong recipe, right? Those are the only two things that go wrong, but it’s easy to identify. Same thing in business, if you have the systems in place, and everybody follows the system, you will have a predictable, measurable output. And if something goes wrong, you can go back to the exact step and know what went wrong and know what to fix. If everybody in your business is doing things their own way. There’s no way to know how to make efficiencies or change those processes. So put the systems in place, teach everybody how to do those, follow them to the letter, and then you have a measurable repeatable outcome.

 

07:06

So guys, as Harlan just shared, we have to simplify, strategize and systematize. What are the bottlenecks, they are facing your business right now? Maybe you could actually apply the system and see where you can get you. Now Harlan, I know that you develop a framework called the Rosco framework as well, can you walk us through this framework? What is it for? And how can an entrepreneur adopt this as part of his day to day?

 

07:25

Sure, Roscoe came out of working with a few clients who were doing exactly what I just said they they didn’t have any systems in place. They would set goals but they’ve never actually achieved the goals. And so Roscoe is a tool to help you achieve the goals. Okay, Roscoe is an acronym, it is our s s. c o. r stands for the result that you’re after. When you set a goal, it isn’t the goal that motivates you. It’s the things that come along with that goal. Think about auto racing, right? The goal is to win the race that get the checkered flag. But winning isn’t what motivates you. It’s all the things that come along with the winning, right? The points, the standing, the money, the girl, the champagne, those are the things that keep you motivated. So working with my clients, we define what is the goal? But then what do you hope to get out of that? Well, how will your life be different if you achieve that goal? So that’s the result once you set the result, the first SS for strategy, what strategy can you use to achieve that goal? Right, and there’s multiple ways you can do it. If I want to lose weight, there are multiple ways I can do that eat properly exercise or get medical intervention, right? If I want to increase my revenue in business, I can do that by raising the prices on my products and services, or implement some other efficiencies in the business right to reduce my costs. So come up with multiple strategies. And then for each one of those strategies, you put in a system, what are the steps I need to implement in order to implement that strategy? The C stands for controls or checkpoints. I’m a pilot. When I fly anywhere outside my local area, I file a flight plan that says Where am I now? Where do I want to be in? How do I plan to get there? And I measure my progress along the way, you have to do the same thing in business? How are you going to measure your progress? How are we going to measure to see if you’re actually on track to achieve that goal. That’s what the C is. And then oh, is a part that most people ignore or forget about oh is the outcome, which is different from the result. The result is what you get from achieving your goal, the outcome are those unexpected or unintended consequences of achieving your goal? If I lose weight, follow my plan, I will lose weight. One of the outcomes is I have to buy new clothes, right? So I have to weigh that against the result. Is that Is it worth it? In business if I want to increase my revenue, I can do that by raising the prices of my products and services. But one of the outcomes is I may lose customers I have to weigh that against the result. And as long as it works fine if not, go back and change your strategy or change the system. You never change the result because that’s what you want. That’s what’s motivating you. But change your strategy and change your system and then put in new measurements and track your progress. Harlan,

 

10:17

I like to pick your brain a little bit more about Rosco framework. If an entrepreneur is struggling and facing some issues growing their business, where should they apply to Rosco framework to where should we start looking?

 

10:27

Usually with my clients, we start with a strategic plan, right? Where are you now? Where do you want to be? From that strategic plan? We identify 90 days in the next 90 days this quarter, what do you plan to achieve? What are your goals? Once you set the goal then you implement Rasco? What Why do you want to achieve that goal? What do you hope to achieve from from that goal? The strategies, the systems, how are you going to check you know your progress on it. And the outcomes. That’s where Rosco really comes into play. It’s easy to set the goals. But now Rosco gives you a step by step plan on exactly how to make sure you you arrive at that goal I see

 

11:04

can either share a bit more about this? Could you share some examples of your clients and how they apply to Roscoe framework and how things changed before and after the 90 days? Sure. Working with one client,

 

11:16

Mary, she is a bookkeeper. And she had started basically from her home and she had a couple employees working for. But things were growing slowly. For two reasons. Number one she was afraid to to increase her prices, right. She wanted to keep them low. And number two, she did most of the work herself. She would do all the Yeah, exactly. trying to do too much herself and she wouldn’t release things to her employees. So we talked and I asked her why why don’t you share this with your employees? Let them do part of this work? And she said I don’t know if they would be willing to? It’s like we’ll ask right. So we put together a plan, how she could teach them how to do these things, how she would turn it over by a certain date, and then how to track that progress. Well, once she started sharing with her employees, they love taking on the new responsibilities, and that freed up a lot of Mary’s time. So now her employees were growing, doing a lot more, Mary had some time back where she could actually go and do more sales, and actually go out to lunch once in a while. And then as far as raising her prices, same thing, we looked at her prices, she had not raised her prices in quite a while we went through, you know what all she provided to her clients came up with a pricing list. And then she rolled out that pricing and accomplished it within the timeframe that we had originally said she got those prices rolled out and raise her prices by about 25%. And nobody, none of the customers blinked. Right. So it’s not associated crease her prices, she got more work done. Since then, that’s been about a year and a half. Now, she’s doubled the size of her company, her clients, she has more people there in a brand new office space. So really opened the doors for her.

 

13:01

So guys, if you’re struggling or bottleneck in your business, perhaps you can try applying the Roscoe framework, think about the results that you won his strategies that you need, the systems that you need to put in place your controls and your desired outcome when you apply this. So think of a timeline by which you want to apply this by Remember to track yourself and hold yourself accountable. Now back to you Highland, you clearly have a lot of experience helping companies get off their feet, what is one, the first few things a new entrepreneur should actually do when they start their business.

 

13:29

You know, you want to build a team. Everybody wants to be an entrepreneur and do everything themselves, you’re limited to how much time you have in the expert expertise you have in certain areas. Find a team, find a team to help you find a mentor, or a business coach to help you lay out a plan for growth. You don’t want to grow too fast, because it may not be sustainable. So put together a plan on exactly how you plan to grow exactly what products or services you’re going to offer. How you will do that. The Why is very important. Always make sure you you maintain that why. But then build a team. If there’s something that you’re not very good at, bring somebody in to cover that for you. Again, limited number of hours in a day, you can’t do everything. So try to find people that are experienced and can take that load off of you so that you as a business owner can focus on the more high value high quality items, right. I know I’ve seen a lot of business owners that are they’re answering the phones, they’re answering email, they’re sweeping the parking lot. They’re doing all these things that are $10 an hour type jobs. Yeah, you need to hire people to do that. So it frees you up to do the things that you really should be focusing on, which is growing your business.

 

14:43

So Khalid from all New Years of experience. What is one issue that you notice your clients struggling with time and time again,

 

14:49

I would say really three key areas they either have struggles with time with their team, their employees or money on the time side they’re they’re not making good use of their time, so they need to Time management. I like to implement a block calendar where you can actually block out time for the things that are most important, those immovable objects, you have to do this on this day at this time, and then filter everything else in there, there’s plenty time to do things. If you make a plan and follow that plan, the team making sure that you hire the right people, retain the right people, but also train your employees and grow leaders within your organization. Our job as a leader is to grow more leaders, right not to grow more followers. So by delegating, delegating should not just be getting things off your plate, but it should also be an opportunity to teach those employees how to lead, how to take on this responsibility. If you as a leader, show them this is our vision, our mission or purpose. These are our core values, these are our strengths and weaknesses, and then let that employee take over that particular aspect of the job. As long as they follow your core values and your vision. Everything’s fine, right? it’ll it’ll all work out. You don’t want to hire somebody and then micromanage that’s I think that’s one thing we do too often to people, hire them for their skills, and then get out of the way and let them use their skill. And then money. I think people have a lot of problems with money. You know, Mike mccalla Wits wrote the book, profit first. Great book, he says that, you know, we’re taught that revenue minus expenses equals profit. He says that’s backwards, you went into business, not to pay bills, but to make a profit. So he thinks that the equation should be revenue minus profit equals expenses. By focusing on taking your profit first and putting it aside. He helps you keep your expenses down, he helps you keep those expenses that you have to pay out and everything, you’re a lot more efficient with your money. By setting aside that profit, you see that profit account start to grow, it motivates you to continue with your business and do more things to try to make that profit, orange. And so I think that’s one area that businesses don’t do. And then what we found after COVID, a lot of businesses didn’t have what I call it cash runway, right? They didn’t have three to six months, cash reserves set aside to help them. And they panicked, you know, the first thing they did was start pulling money out of things like their marketing budget, to try to save money, well, you have to have money set aside and you can’t disappear from the map. In business, I had a couple clients that doubled the ad, couple clients that actually doubled down on their marketing, they made it through the pandemic and actually came out the other side, bigger, stronger companies, because they were available, they were out there doing the work, you know. So yeah,

 

17:42

it was a very interesting points that you shared, of course, profit is very important. But I think a lot of new entrepreneurs who don’t realize that there’s the other side of the coin that you need to consider, which is cash flow, you may be profitable, but things like your payment, credit dates, if you complete a task. And as a service provider, as a consultant, sometimes it takes a little bit of time for your clients to actually pay you What is a 30 day credit timeline, a 60 day or 90 day this can really affect your cash flow, because they will affect how you can pay your own supplies your own employees. So that’s something that a lot of new entrepreneurs tend to miss out on. And especially a very important as it did catch her on as well. And then you spoke a little bit about growing leaders internally, within organization, a leader pick your brain a little bit more on this point. Sometimes when an organization has good employees, they still look towards the outside to hire someone externally to come in to become a new manager. Now this is contrasted to a position where someone internally within the organization is being promoted. What are your thoughts on this? Usually, when this happens, the internal morale for the employees will be affected. They may feel, for example, that their loyalty is not being rewarded. What are your views on this?

 

18:48

No, that’s a good point actually happened to me a couple times in my career, I was told if I wanted to progress in the company, I had to look outside of my department tried to go somewhere else. They were looking to hire somebody and they were going to bring somebody in from from outside and is very demoralizing. When you work that much for a company you want to, you know, we want to know that we’re growing, that we’re contributing that we’re valuable to a company. So yeah, I would I would absolutely say you should have a plan. Entrepreneurs should have a plan in place for how they were hire, and then grow their their employees into leaders. What’s that succession plan look like? You know what, at what point Can you turn over a little bit more responsibility? At what point do you give them some subordinates that they’re managing? You know, what, how do you how do you grow that? I would definitely tell or employers talk within their company. You have people who are chomping at the bit they want to serve, they want to be leaders, they want to grow within the company, train them, give them the opportunity and then coach them if they do something wrong, coach them right on how to do it right. And again, a lot of it goes back to the core values of the business. We make decisions based on our core values. If If you don’t teach your employees what the core values are for the company, who knows what they’re going to use for their decisions, right? So you want to make sure that they’re following whatever the vision, mission and purpose of your businesses, the core values of your business, give them the result you’re after. And then let them do it, and then coach them to get them, you know, on track if they need to Harlan I fully agree.

 

20:24

So there is a problem. Sometimes when you hire externally, rather than promote internally, promoting your own employees, you may cause them to feel less value. And he may be a bit demoralizing for them, when they have to actually coach somebody who is supposed to be a manager, instead of the other way around, this can really end up creating an environment where employees feel that they’re being rewarded for their loyalty. And this may actually cause issues with retention rates may cause a brain drain at the end of the day. But since we’re talking about organizational change, I know you’re an expert in this area. In fact, you focus down on this area a lot in your career. Could you explain what are the biggest triggers of organizational change? What are some of the biggest issues that can affect or even trade in a company,

 

21:06

I’ll give you a good example of a company we work for years ago, they were doing a major change to their processes, restructuring and a reengineering of their processes. And the man who was leading the change, he was making all the decisions didn’t involve his key employees didn’t involve the more tenured more senior employees in his decision making. And we kept telling him, you know, we really need to communicate better, we need to get your employees involved and engaged. And he said, they will do what I tell them where they will be fired. And we looked at him and said, Well, here’s my prediction, right? If you stay with this line of thinking, you’re going to lose your top employees, because they know their skills can be used somewhere else. So you’ll lose them, you’ll lose the very, very bottom level employees that are just barely hanging on. And you’ll be left with that what we call a mediocre middle. And sure enough, that’s what happened. His top employees left a lot of his bottom employees left, and he was left with this mediocre work team that their productivity went down, you know, the the sales went down, I think he ended up leaving the company or was fired. You have to engage your employees, your employees have as much stake in your success as you do. engage them talk to them, they’ve been doing this work, how can we improve this work? Or what can we do differently here? How do we do this now? How can we make it better, and then use their ideas? Every time you can within the business? What that does is a couple things, it makes them more loyal, it makes them want that process to work out correctly. But then they also have the peer support, where it’s like, Hey, I came up with this process, make sure you’re doing it the right way. Right. So they kind of help each other out. So it really solidifies that business. And as long as you keep the employees with you, yeah,

 

22:55

yeah, I fully agree. Now, Helen, I know you’re very passionate about flying and business. And this has led you to write two books on this subject. But what I am keen to know is how your journey as a pilot has shaped the way you think and react as a business leader and owner.

 

23:07

Yeah, I love flying years ago, my wife and I stopped giving each other gifts, things for presidents, we started giving experiences. So I gave her a Corvette Racing school. And one year she gave me flying lessons. And I love I love flying. It’s very expensive habit or hobby, but I love it. I was on a training flight with my flight instructor just flying around the local area. We’re up at about 7000 8000 feet. And my flight instructor said what is that off your left wing? Well, when I turned to look out the window, he reached over and pulled the throttle out basically put the engine in neutral. Now in those little tiny planes, those little tiny planes, it’s very loud in the cockpit. While I’m looking out to the side, I didn’t see what he did. And suddenly, the engine It sounded like the internet stopped. It was very quiet. And you feel that momentum lifts you out of the seat just a little bit. And I panicked. And I turned to look at him. My eyes were about this big. I looked at him and I said what the heck just happened? And he said you just lost your engine. What do you do now? Well, that’s something that you as a pilot, you need to understand, right? What do you do? How do you work this and what he had taught us in ground school was aviate. Navigate, communicate. aviate means fly the plane. That’s your number one job regardless what else has happened fly the plane, you have to maintain your altitude maintain your airspeed. So you stay aloft as you’re working on whatever the problem happens to be. Same thing in business if something goes wrong, focus on your business. Make sure you maintain the business because if you know you’ve had a fire, let’s say or a flood, if you take your eye off doing business and taking care of your customers, you’re going to fail in your business and that’s not gonna help anybody so aviate always take care of the business. Navigate, you always want to know where you are. In relation to where you should be, and how to get back on course, if you need to, right you need to go where you are at every minute. Same thing in business, you need to know what your numbers are, you need to know where you are on your plan. And if you find yourself off course, how do you get back on course, very critical to know exactly where you are at all times. And then communication. To me, leadership and communication go hand in hand, if you’re not a good effective communicator, you’re not going to be a good effective leader. When something goes wrong in the airplane, I need to communicate with the other passengers, here’s what’s going on. But I have it under control, here’s what I need from you. And here’s how I’m going to handle this situation. Same thing in business, if something goes wrong, your employees are looking to you. If you’re panicking, they’re gonna panic even more. But if you say, here’s where we are, here’s how we’re going to get back on track. And here’s what I need you to do. They will do it, right. But you have to communicate that to them. So aviate, navigate, communicate, I got those three things from flying, and I try to implement those with my clients, every every opportunity. I get

 

26:00

policies, we’re talking about leadership. Let’s talk a little bit about your podcast, if a podcast called the courage to lead, tell us more about it.

 

26:07

And again, this come from working with some of my clients, I had a couple clients that were brand new to being leaders being the boss, and they weren’t making difficult decisions. They weren’t having the difficult conversations that you have to have as a leader. And I told them both, you need to step up, be stronger. And they said, Well, what exactly does that look like? So I went out looking for articles to try to give them some idea of what it meant to be a strong, courageous leader. And that’s where I got the idea for the podcast. So the courage to lead asks the question, what does it take to be a courageous leader? I talked to business leaders, community leaders, entrepreneurs, to ask them, where did you find the courage to achieve your current level of success? Where did you find the courage to walk away from a good paying nine to five job to start your own business? I’ve talked to lawyers, who were very, very accomplished lawyers, and they walked away from that job to start their own consulting business. Where do you find that courage, right? People who have overcome tragedy in their life, a medical tragedy or death or something like that, where did you find the courage to keep going to achieve that level of success? Because I think that’s important as as entrepreneurs, people listening to the podcast here, somebody’s going through something very similar to them, that they overcame that that situation, and it’s like, I can do that, too. And that’s what I’m hoping is that people will listen to the podcast and say, you know, I can be successful too.

 

27:34

Now, I know that there are a lot of styles of leadership. But sometimes the typical problems that new leaders or inexperienced leaders may have is that they may be too assertive, or too consultative. Those are probably the ends of the extreme. Do you have any tips that you can share with an entrepreneur on how they can become a better leader?

 

27:51

I think the confidence comes over time. I don’t know that you can take a college or university course on confidence. I think it happens over time. You do there, there are times when you do have to be consultative, you have to talk to your employees, especially when it has to do I think with the internal processes and procedures, they understand how the process works, they probably see things that are not efficient, and have ideas on how to make those corrections. So that I think you should be consultative with them. When it comes to the vision for the company. Where are you going? The purpose, how you plan to get, you know, to your goals, the financial side of the business, I think you have to be a little bit more directive, as a leader on exactly what that is. I think if you set the goal, and then turn your employees and say, help me achieve this goal, they’ll be with you. If you turn to them and say what do you think we should do? They’re going to lose confidence in you. And that’s the last thing you want. Right? You want to make sure that you maintain that that leadership role and a leader is all at the strategic level, setting the vision, setting the goals, having a plan, and then at the tactical level, turning the employees and say how can we how can we achieve this together?

 

29:05

That was very wealthy at Holland, at the end of the day. It is a balancing act. You need to balance out being assertive and being able to be consultative as well, the better you can balance this and walk the fine line, the better leader you can be.

 

29:17

Absolutely I just talked to uh, I just talked to a guy on my podcast that his company had grown to about 300 employees. They were making money hand over fist. He had the fancy cars, he had the big vacations and everything like that. But his model for leadership was so dictatorial, I guess you’d call it. He was a dictator. He screamed at his employees, he belittled his employees. He blamed them for everything that went wrong in the company. And the business actually almost failed. And he lost his top employees and a lot of his good customers he lost because of the way that he was leading. It took some introspection but he had to turn around and come back to his employees and say I have failed you This is all my fault. And here’s how we’ll make it better. He realized that he wasn’t building a culture. He calls it a culture of love. When you love your family or your team, you’ll do anything to help your team be successful. Right? He wasn’t fostering that within his company. And so to the strength, the courage that he had to turn back around to his employees and say, This is all my fault, I take full responsibility. And here’s how I want to fix this. He’s had to rebuild that company from scratch. And now they’re back to where they were before. But that that took a lot. And it’s it. You’re right, it’s finding that balance. At what point do you stand up and say, I’m the boss, At what time? Do you stand up and say, help? You know, how can how can we help get this together? So that was a that was a lesson for me? Definitely. Oh, that

 

30:45

is very interesting now that we’re connecting the dots, your experience of business, especially in organizational change, and leadership are indeed very core ingredients of what makes a good business. Hmm. Wow.

 

30:59

I think having the courage to admit that you don’t know, having the courage to ask for help, having the courage to seek out a coach or a mentor for the things you don’t need. And I think that’s, that’s one of the most important things. I think too many, too many of us have this idea that the leader has to always be the smartest person in the room. And I think if you’re the smartest person in the room, you need to find a different room. Right? I am always learning from the people that I work with. And I think that’s something that new entrepreneurs need to keep in mind. You don’t have to be the smartest person, but you have to surround yourself with top people, and then give them the space to do their job.

 

31:37

Yeah, it’s okay to say that, I don’t know. But only if you follow up and say, but I will find out.

 

31:42

Absolutely, absolutely. Or turn to your employees and say, I don’t know, help me, you know, how could How can we do this? And you know, that gives him a sense of ownership in the company too. You know, I helped solve a problem with the company, they’re going to be a lot more loyal to you and the business.

 

31:57

So here’s one very important question, how can listeners get in touch review if they need your help?

 

32:02

One of the easiest ways would be my website. The website is IB for EA dash coaching.com. Or they can reach out to me via email. And the email is coach at IB for e.com.

 

32:17

Thanks, Harlan for joining us today. It’s been a real pleasure, though.

 

32:21

This has been fun. I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

 

32:24

Now guys, I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. So why not apply the Rosco system to any problem that you’re solving, whether it’s your business or in your personal life, having a system that encourages you to weigh the outcome with the results and to recalibrate sounds like a good idea to me. If you enjoyed today’s show, why not share it with a fellow entrepreneur who is buying it this way as well. And remember to subscribe to the show, so you’ll be informed every time a new episode comes out. And don’t forget about the Amazon gift voucher giveaway. If you actually do subscribe and leave a review on Apple iTunes by the end of September, and you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. All show notes and resources are available on tatio.com. That’s t d t o.com. That’s all for me today. I’ll see you next time.