From Frustration to Flow in Business Processes with Samantha Cordero

0:00 Have you ever worked with a group or a person that suffers from unsecured commitments and uncommunicated expectations? I feel like that's almost everyone we work with, right? No, what's interesting, I will say, a lot of my work is almost like corporate therapy. I'm there to ask the questions and a lot of times the questions I'm asking help the manager, help the CEO, whoever and I always get this response and almost every time I work with a client, they're like oh, now that you asked that question, I'm thinking this or these questions have helped me figure out that this is really what I wanted.

0:41 So I think a lot of times we talk expectations and we don't even know what our own expectations are. What is going on L&M family. I'm back with a super awesome person and the reason I say super awesome is because we've had a couple of little chats and every time it's just like fun and so I imagine me and Miss Samantha are going to have a ton of fun today. And just so you know a little bit about her, she is a people first process improvement specialist. If y'all know me, you know I'm all about people and you know that process improvement stuff kind of tickles my fancy, and you know that process improvement stuff kind of tickles my fancy.

1:25 She's also got some expertise, experience, wizardry, in the virtual assistant system automation space, which I'm probably going to get nosy about that. If you need help cleaning up your business, miss Samantha can help you. So here we go to Miss Samantha. Samantha, how are you? I am feeling good today. I'm trying to match the level of your energy, though, so let me try to get hype with you. You know it's funny. When I'm like talking kind of figuring out or negotiating a deal with clients, I can always see their face. They're like is this dude for real, what's he on? And I have to like, oh, I can always see their face. They're like is this dude for real, what's he on? And I have to like oh, I need to tell you like you think my energy is elevated.

2:09 Now, wait till I'm in front of a group of people. Right, totally different. You're going to think I'm on drugs or something, but it's just me. It's just how I am. Yeah. But I think that's the awesome thing, cause I feel like I know that my energy is always amplified by the person I'm talking to you and, like I said, like your energy is awesome. So we're going to try. We don't need to melt the Internet with this conversation, but we can get close to it. How about that? Yeah, I'm not trying to be Kim K today, but I mean, like you and I, we both dive into some really hard topics with our clients and so if we're not bringing that fun energy, then it's going to be way harder to get people where we're trying to take them, right.

2:54 Yes, yes, because leading change is painful and uncomfortable. I know I tinker around with people's stuff. I love doing that and I also know I don't like people tinkering around with my stuff. Right Like back off what you trying to do Right. I know I was going into a client, so I was on site with a client the other day and I kind of had just like fire rounds, like back to back meetings with some of their managers. And I remember one person left and told the other manager that was coming in good luck. I was like you don't need luck with me, like we're going to be friends but we're just going to. We're going to talk about some hard stuff, but don't be wishing good luck in front of me.

3:38 Oh, so have you ever had anybody say, all right, it's your turn in the principal's office? I haven't had that, but I have had. A lot of what I do is usually in groups, so I only do one-on-one when I know it's going to be okay. We're going to dive into some stuff and I want you to feel totally vulnerable. So a lot of times in group meetings I have had people pause and go. Well, dan Sam, you're really going for the jugular and I'm like someone's got to ask these questions. I don't know why you didn't ask yourself this question a year ago, but I'm here now, so we're going to dive into it, right. Yeah, like, why fiddle fart around? Let's make something happen, all right. So obviously we love that torture or whatever that is, or that experience, right, because it really is like the type of real conversations about the real stinky stuff so we can do something about it.

4:24 Now, what was it about? Like, how did you get to doing that kind of work? Because I don't ever remember hearing about a career opportunity in process improvement, automation, optimizing situations Like that was never a thing, even discussed when I was in high school. How does that happen for you? Yeah, definitely a non-traditional route. So I think in every one of my jobs when I was in corporate, I was always kind of in a position or rather I willingly put myself in the position of saying this does not make sense, why are we doing it this way? Like I'm not trying to be stressed out at work every day. So how could I make this easier for me In the office world?

5:08 I started out as a recruiter in the staffing industry and if you know anything about staffing, it's very similar to construction as far as like, the traditional work week is like 50 plus hour weeks. Oh yeah. And it was very quick for me. I was like I'm not trying to live like this, like I love the company. I love the people I'm helping. I was staffing a lot in warehouses, so the people I were meeting were people that were genuinely wanted jobs and just wanted to show up and work, didn't care about being sweaty. I had a lot of immigrants from the Middle East coming into my staffing office. I was like I love what I'm doing, but I don't love y'all enough to like live at the office, and so it was just a position of okay, how can I make this a little bit better? And so it was just a position of okay, how can I make this a little bit better? And then I went into a home building, a residential building company, and I also went into a software company and in every circumstance there was always moments of this is not working.

5:54 It's not working for me. I could see that other people around me are stressed out Like I don't want to join in the let's just be victims of the work schedule approach. And I was very fortunate in the company I worked at. That was a software company. They focused a lot on lean. They went a little bit more into the lean Six Sigma than I have a preference for with my clients. But I was introduced to all of these different elements and I was like, oh my gosh, I can take what I've learned from HR, what I've learned from recruiting, and marry it with this. Operations and the puzzle piecing and this is what's going to like really make a difference for people. I think, even with everything we might see on LinkedIn post pandemic of work-life balance, there's still so many people living in a living at their jobs right, living in a world where they don't know what the word balance means that they've never experienced that, and so it's just.

6:43 It's been a fun journey to like puzzle, piece what I've learned and then help put the pieces together for other people. Oh, so I love the way you've like puzzle piecing because, yes, right Like it's, in some situations some teams, some departments, some businesses it's a blank puzzle piece, like just pile of pieces, and others like they've got the frame, they've got the outline done and they're building out the corner and they're kind of stuck. I love that frame because, yes, that's exactly what it feels like Now you went from. So you went from recruiting kind of HR, went to residential, went to software, which most people or maybe I'll just say this in my simple lazy thinking like those are totally different situations.

7:29 But because of the work that I've done, something tells me you saw some commonalities in those different industries that were like wait a minute, there's another layer here that we're missing. Yeah, absolutely. I think people really, when it comes to niching down, which America? We're really the only country that says find a niche right. So people that entrepreneurs I've met that come from the UK, south Africa, all these different countries, they come to the US and they're like oh, I didn't know I needed to have a niche right. Really, that's because there's just different messaging, right, it's the same problem. It's just like how does your person think about that problem? What are the words they use? Right? And so I definitely saw a lot of commonalities in all of those areas.

8:12 First and foremost was people don't think they're going to be friends with me at first. They're like who? is this high energy kind of crazy person, like what is happening, let me have some distance, right. And all of a sudden they're like oh okay, and they start telling me their secrets. I've always had like that therapist aspect to it, right. So dealing with the software guys, the nerds that in software and the geophysicists I worked with is like same kind of nerd I'm going to meet when I go to the construction site Like they just don't know that. They're similar, right. So I think just dealing with those personalities that don't often speak up, that usually hold things in and try to just go with the flow A lot of similarities there. Same. Thing in the warehouse, people that just want to show up and do their work, and they see all these bigger problems, but they don't always feel comfortable speaking up, and it's about giving them the avenue to share their challenges and share the ideas they have and say, hey, like you work here every day, you have a perspective that matters, and so that was really common across the industries.

9:10 I see you thinking there. You kind of realize the same thing. Before that, I want to give the L&M shout out to Miss Stephanie. Miss Stephanie left me an awesome little voicemail on the LinkedIn DM and let me just it's paraphrased so I'm not going to play it, but she says thank you, jesse, you refilled my entrepreneurial batteries, you gave me a lot to think about and I appreciate it. And, of course, getting that little voicemail was extra special and the reason I wanted to share it is because we just had a conversation and folks gifting people with your time, being fully present, listening to them, sharing your insight, demonstrating interest and appreciation, can transform somebody's day.

9:58 Stephanie gave me that opportunity to do that because we scheduled the call. So, stephanie, thank you for sharing that. And to the rest of the L&M family out there, reach out and touch someone. So you talked about and I love it, because in construction you know me, I'm in the field. When I say field, I'm talking about my heart. I'll say let me just be clear Most of my clients are general contractors and I spend most of my time with department heads, vps, like folks that are not in the field, because I'm a carpet dweller right, I'm a house cat. Now I can't really claim to be a field guy anymore, but my heart is with the men and women that are out there sweating and freezing and busting their knuckles to build the things that everybody else manages.

10:49 So I want to come back to this. But you said speaking up avenue right, giving the workers in the warehouse the avenue to speak up and point out or even address problems that they're living. So I want to come back to that because that's my favorite subject. But before we get into that, I'm suspecting because I know me, the way I like to think about it is I was or am chronically discontent, meaning if a process is wonky or funky or just feels like it's taking too much. I mean, if somebody wants me to participate in something, I'm like yes, my conditions are maximum of four clicks.

11:33 If I got to do more than four clicks to be a part of this thing, call somebody else, which is kind of not nice. But there's inefficiencies in a lot of things. And that's the point is like, how is it going to be a bazillion emails? It could be bazillion texts and calls and like, if that's the case, probably not. But if I can get a calendar invite, click on that, hit a link and be on the thing. Hell yeah, I'm in. So anyways, all of that to say, I had that itch, that chronic discontent, when I was an installer, when I didn't have a lot of influence and I complained about things. And then I got promoted and then I would start changing things to make it better right, to make it better Now.

12:15 The natural consequence of that is resistance and friction. And so my question to you is, as you were coming up and finding your way through, I'm sure you couldn't just leave wonky, goofy things alone and you were compelled to do something about them and you faced friction before what you do now. For a young professional that's in that situation, like, how did you deal with that? And and what do you recommend someone who's in that situation now? How would you advise them to navigate that? So that's a really great question, because a lot of I do work so much with kind of similar to you those high, the high level executives, those mid-level managers, and then the young professionals that are like maybe just starting out and this is something I see so common is that there are some really great young professionals that have such great ideas.

13:06 They're also used to kind of things being easy, right, Like we're in high school. Everything's structured for me. I go to college, I know now I got to sign up for classes, but still things are structured. I just follow the map and I show up to school. So when they get to a job where there are inefficient processes, they feel the frustration more than maybe some of us that are jaded and have been there for so many years, right, and the difference for me? sorry, let me actually back up and say if you are feeling that frustration and you haven't problem solved before and you're bringing up those frustrations, you're going to be positioned as the complainer. You are now branded as the problem child. I have seen people get kicked out of meetings because they're like, well, you're always showing us what's wrong, like we don't need that Right, and it's easy to get into that mindset and just be labeled that way.

13:52 And so what you have to do is say, okay, I can't, just not complain Like I can't leave this alone because this is a problem for me and for everyone else. But how do I actually move this forward? And the biggest thing is understanding how the other person sees it Right. So when we in lean, we talk about voice of the customer Also, the customer doesn't just mean our external customers. They're the most important customers because they're paying us Right. But we've got internal customers Right. So we've got to say, ok, I've got this problem. How does my manager view this problem? How does like, why would they care about me solving this Right? If about my recruiting days and okay, we've got a whole bunch of applicants, we don't have a great way of tracking this. What have you? It's frustrating for me because it's a lot of data entry.

14:32 I gotta waste time finding the information. I feel disorganized like. That's annoying. But what does the owner of the staffing agency care about this? Well, he wants me to fill the orders for our clients faster yes right. so's like okay, what's the big money? Talk for my manager or for my peers If they feel like data is disorganized hey, you want things faster for me. We've got to fix X, y and Z, so we've got to say this is the outcome of the solution, but this is where the problems are coming from. So if we can stop complaining first and just use the complaining as maybe the reasoning behind why we want change, that's how a young professional can now really frame their value in a company instead of being that problem child. Oh, that's expert, expert advice.

15:14 There you go, l&m family, you got some gold. I worked for a pipe fitter, ed Mauricio. I was his helper for a couple of years and brilliant advice. Like he slapped me silly, really, because I was a complainer. But I didn't understand that I was a complainer. I thought I'm helping people realize that there's better ways to do things. And because I had I heard the saying right, the squeaky wheel gets the oil. And so Ed said, jesse, yes, the squeaky wheel gets the oil, but the broken wheel gets replaced. And I'm like, oh damn, if you never stop squeaking, maybe you're broken Right. And then he went on he's like Jess, don't complain.

15:57 He's like you take on every fight, every inefficiency, everything that bugs you. It's a bit, you make a big damn deal about it. Inefficiency, everything that bugs you, it's a bit, you make a big damn deal about it. It's like, how about you stop complaining? Or, like he said, don't complain about anything that you're not prepared to take action on. And then I'm like, oh, got it. Like, okay, if there's something, sure, there's a million things for me to to whine about, but if I'm not prepared to take ownership and do something about it, bring it to resolution. Do the thinking that you described like, connect it to the outcome and contextualize it so that the decision maker can be on board with the solution.

16:37 If I'm not prepared to do all of that, don't say nothing, suck it up and deal with it. I'm like done Totally transformed my trajectory because I was not building credibility by complaining all the time, it just. It took me a long time to figure that out. And I hope whoever's listening can be like, okay, I'm going to. I'm going to just take the lesson from them and not try to learn it for myself. What I love about what you said is it has so many different applications. Like same thing with gossiping in the office. You're gossiping about it, but are you prepared to tell that person how you feel about the trust? If you and I if I decide to gossip to you about somebody.

17:35 I'm going to feel good talking smack about somebody, but the risk is that you're going to say, like Jesse, I thought Jesse was a higher caliber person, but he's a smack talker. Because if he's going to talk smack to me about that person, the likelihood is that he's going to be talking smack about me to somebody else, right, and then so there goes the whole credibility button. So excellent point on the. What is it the gossip? The cheese man? No, cheese man. Right. I think something else we missed as well, though, going back to solving the problem as well, though, going back to solving the problem, A lot of people because I hear this also from a lot of managers because part of, ultimately, from processes we got to make job descriptions right.

18:16 We shouldn't have job descriptions just because we see a problem, but it has to relate back to a process. And I'll start talking to managers like, okay, well, what is, what's the expectation for this person? We've got to have clarity here. We've got to say, like, what does success look like for this person? And a lot of times, one of those bullet points is well, I want them to be able to solve problems. If they see something, I want them to come with me to us with a solution. And what I realized is a lot of people have never been in that position of no idea how to solve the problem, which is something that okay now. Now I then work with my clients and their lower level team members say okay, this is how we're going to start solving problems, this is how you can approach it right, and we do that training. But for anyone that's listening also, I want to say you don't always have to come to your manager with a solution, but you can say I see this problem and it's affecting XYZ, so if you could still frame it in the this is why you care about it right, and then say I need help finding a solution.

19:08 Or how do you? How is the best way for me to approach this Right? So a lot of times we hear all the time will come to me with a solution and you're like, I don't know how. Like, can I ask? for help. Am I allowed to? ask you questions. It's OK if we don't always have a solution, but let's get going on the action plan, still getting out of that complainer mindset Right. Yeah, absolutely, out of that complainer mindset, right? Yeah, absolutely. And that takes us back to the idea of speaking up, providing them an avenue, and the idea of internal customers, because that has been. I'll say this at a certain point I've had some influence and one of my jobs I say jobs cause I've had like a bunch of different jobs in my career, yeah, yeah. My, my responsibility was to support the business unit and recruit people.

19:53 I worked with a lot of staffing agencies, like partnered up to find people, blah, blah, blah. I would analyze financial projections and manpower projections and reconcile that, find out who's lying and find out where the problem like. I did all that fun stuff and then I did like the lean stuff right. That was my side job and every so often the project teams would want me to come to the project to like find, look deep into a problem and help launch something or help shore something up. And my deal was this yes, I will come to your project on one condition you do not introduce me to the general contractor. This is when I was on the trade side of the business. You do not introduce me to the general contractor. This is when I was on the trade side of the business. You do not introduce me to the GC. And if, by chance, we end up crossing paths, I'm nobody of consequence, I'm just a damn fly on Like.

20:41 I'm just a visitor taking your time, because if they knew that I was responsible for labor, they would be hounding me, and so I got a little bit of trouble for that. They're like Jesse, you can't do that. They're our customers. Like, yeah, no, I agree, they're our customers, but we have so many resources dedicated to serving the external customer. You don't need me doing that too, because the resources we have serving our internal customers are thin and I want to be that resource. Now that takes me to this idea of helping people speak up or find an avenue to speak up, and what you described when you have a leader that says don't bring me problems, bring me solutions which sounds cute, but it's not that easy.

21:26 And introducing people you said it, but it's not that easy. And introducing people you said it. Some people don't know how to do that, and so you got to like some people get autonomy and they lose their mind because they don't know how to deal with autonomy, but they want it. And I think that's all like within that ball of knots, this idea of helping the workforce, the people closest to the delivering of the value, of helping the workforce, the people closest to the delivering of the value, helping them speak up and surface problems and do something about the problems. What does that look like? When you think about helping people get there? What should a change?

22:10 agent expect from that audience? Yeah, so really interesting. We're talking about autonomy, right, especially when we look at a world where, again, post pandemic, everyone's like, well, I might leave a job that pays really well for this culture because I have more autonomy here, right, and that's going to go hand in hand with managers that are like I want accountability, I want my team to hold themselves accountable, and I'm like okay, have you taken your dog for a walk? Have you taken your dog off the leash? Are you confident they're going to stand right next to you when you take them off the leash? Are they going to run? Are they going to chase us? What are they going to do? Right? So we definitely don't want short leash management, but someone that's never even had long leash management, like they're not going to do well, you take the leash away altogether.

22:52 And we got it like autonomy is not saying like go figure this shit out yourself. Like autonomy is like I'm empowering you to make these decisions. I'm here if you need help, but I only want you to come to me if you like really need my help, right, or you just kind of need a little bit of validation on this solution you have, and autonomy comes from giving an abundance of clarity and direction. Right, so, when people are like, oh, like we don't need to have this SOP, and I'm like we realize if you have a process down, then your team can think less about this process, they go through the workflow and they're like, oh, this could be improved, oh, I have an idea for this. Right? Or if we're saying like I want you to be autonomous and be able to make these decisions.

23:35 What are the outcomes of the decisions that you want? So you don't care about the journey, you care about the destination. Let me know the parameters of that destination, where am I supposed to end up? And then I can make decisions. Right, so like we can't confuse autonomy, for just like they need to be hyper independent, they just need to be able to think on their own. Is what we're after, right? Yeah, yeah, I mean, given I think of you go bowling, right, you take, or maybe, okay, I'll admit it, every time I go bowling I get the bumpers up. When you take a kid, you take the bumpers up so that you want to stay on the lane, like that. It's the guardrails, how to provide the guardrails and let you know where the destination is. Get there, I don't care how you get there.

24:17 Some people like I'm super, like my brother, renee, shout out renee, because he does all the editing and the clips and stuff, and it's like we're working through it. I'm like, dude, I don't know exactly what I want. I don't know how to do what I want in terms of, but I want them to be fancier, like this. And so he did it. He's like, yeah, that's it, can you add this? Yep, and so how he does it, how he gets there, this is the outcome that I'm seeking and we have a process right, like we got the Trello board. Here's what's coming up, this one's next, so that he can go and do his thing. I mean, that's kind of a generic response and me just sucking up to him, so maybe he'll give me a discount on the editing, but anyways, you're 100% right, the autonomy thing.

25:01 It's irresponsible to just throw people into a situation without clarity, without clear boundaries, guidelines, direction. It's the never ending. Or maybe here's a question have you ever worked with a group or a person that suffers from unsecured commitments and uncommunicated expectations? I feel like that's almost everyone we work with. No, what's interesting, I will say a lot of my, a lot of my work is almost like corporate therapy, right, I'm there to ask the questions and a lot of times, the questions I'm asking help the manager, help the CEO, whoever and I always get this response and almost every time I work with a client, they're like oh, now that you asked that question, I'm thinking this or these questions have helped me figure out that this is really what I wanted, right?

25:58 So I think a lot of times we talk expectations and we don't even know what our own expectations are Right and I'm going to bring this back to actually really simple, real simple analogy here. My birthday is coming up. Hey, now my husband's like, what do you want for your birthday? Like, and I am almost like, if anyone has ever watched new girl, I'm just, I'm like I'll take myself to the movies, like, unless you're going to meet my high expectations, let me not get my hopes up. I'm good, right, like I'll celebrate my own birthday. So we're talking through. Okay, what are the expectations here? Like he knows, I'm a foodie like. So we're talking through okay, what are the expectations here? Like he knows, I'm a foodie Like I love steak, right, and I'm like, listen, I don't care if it's going to be a real casual pizza dinner or if it's going to be a steak dinner. What I care about is I have time anxiety, so I care if we have a reservation.

26:40 I don't want to show up and now we've got to wait, and for my husband it's fine to show bar and drink a little bit before we sit down for dinner. Like, my expectation is that we have a reservation and I'm able to sit and not stand in my heels for 45 minutes before I get my steak Right. So we've got to be really clear about what do I like, but really, what are the expectations I want my team to have and how can I be hyper clear about that? Oh, I love it and what I particularly love. And, folks, if you missed it, sometimes we're horrible at being clear in our expectations with others because we are not even clear with ourselves. Situation 100%.

27:34 So I'll ask you this, samantha, for you, how do you, how did you like, what's your method for getting clear about your expectations? Cause you just illustrated it beautifully. Is it something that you did naturally, or is there a process, a method that helped you get to that point? Definitely not a natural thing, like if we're talking learning and missteps, istep, I fell, I rolled down the mountain, I tried to get back up and I tripped on my shoelace like it was a journey right my personal life and my professional life. I'm like I just know that I'm frustrated, but I don't know why I'm frustrated. I don't know what my expectation is and actually something that I realized I'm gonna have you ever taken a personality test like Clifton Strains, colby? Yeah, I've taken like three in one day, cause I'm just like curious, I'm like tell me the answers to myself.

28:17 Right, but what are my top five? Clifton Strains If no one has ever taken that, I highly recommend you take it. One of my top five is a relator, and that means I like to achieve things alongside others, right? And so it makes me super good for what I do with my clients. I'm like I want to see you succeed In my business, though it means hey, like to get clear on this expectation. I'm going to brainstorm with my team. I'm going to say, hey, I have this idea. I don't know where I'm trying to go. Like can we talk through this? And because I've empowered my team to make decisions, they feel comfortable talking to me. Now we can have some real open dialogue. They might say an idea and I'm like I don't think that's going to work because of X, y and Z or the client doesn't like this that sounds good for us but doesn't serve our client Right, and we can go back and forth and then we'll say, okay, now, this is my expectation, this is actually what I want, and so I think sometimes, if we're not clear, we don't need to find the answer through journaling all the time.

29:09 Just go talk to your team, say I want to brainstorm with you, come talk to me about this. Yeah, there's value and understand. Like I am a, I'm a hermit. You can ask several. Well, I'll tell you, like Jude, you got it, like you're a real hermit for real. And so solitude is where I get my clarity. Now, just like you said, you don't have to go journal and go lock yourself in a cave. I think the more important thing is figure out what your style is. Like you, yours is a group function, right, and the collaboration and the brainstorming and that sort of thing. I isolate or I embrace solitude. Scratch that, and I don't know that one is right or wrong, except that I know.

29:53 For me, without a doubt, solitude helps me get clear. Without a doubt, collaboration, group brainstorming helps you get clear. And so, for folks out there, if you're wondering, there's like no one answer. But figuring out what it is, what are the conditions that help you get clarity, is ultra important, especially when you're leading and working with teams, because they need to understand. You have to be able to communicate your expectation. They can't just read your mind. Otherwise you're one of those bosses that's always moving the goalpost and more is not a goal, that's an addiction. I know because it's my addiction and it's not healthy for anybody else.

30:36 What do you think about that, samantha? I completely agree, and I think that's maybe what the really tough part about being a manager or a leader in general is you've got to have, you got to be open to getting to know yourself, you've got to have that reflection, you've got to have that awareness, and so that's real tough, especially if we didn't grow up kind of having those conversations, if we don't have that support within our organization to figure myself out and I'm not, you don't have to, I'm going to get- myself in trouble. You don't have to go to therapy. I'm all for if you feel like you need therapy, I'm all for it. You just got to get used to talking about the challenge, right? That's really what therapy is there for? Let's open up the conversation, the dialogue about this. And so many people feel, especially as a manager, oh, I've got to have the answer or I've always got to be on my A game with my team.

31:20 I can't let them see me be vulnerable, right, it's like no, it's okay to do that. It's okay to ask them questions. Hear what they think we go back to. Hey, our warehouse guys are frontline employees. They have some ideas. Like they're doing the work every day. They're your on the ground intelligence. Use them. You talk about every James Bond movie that where they're like we can use drones and they're like, nothing beats the human intelligence of having our spy on the ground. Right, like your employees are your spies on the ground. It's okay to not be on your A game with them all the time, right? Oh, I love that Like on the ground intelligence, like firsthand. They know what the hell is going on and when you have a relationship with them, guess what?

32:01 You get all the juicy intel that's going to improve the business. Oh, so, geez, I'm loving this. Okay, now you've mentioned lean. Okay, now you've mentioned lean. We're talking a lot about leadership and self-awareness and personal development. I know some people that would say why are you talking about lean and leadership? And then I also know some other people that are like yeah, absolutely, they're synonymous. Where do you think that comes from? The divide there? Yeah, well, I think most people when they think about lean, all they know about it is Toyota. They're like, okay, well, manufacturing robots, let's just put this set of screwdrivers next to this set of screws and problem solved, right.

32:43 And the difference is well, now we're talking about lean in a more human environment, right? Like, yeah, doing those manufacturing and production lines. Definitely, we're not going to treat people like robots, but also robots can do some of this work, right? So now we've got to say, okay, how am I efficient with my team? How do I make people efficient? And when we talk about people being efficient, well, now they've got to be positive. Now I've got to talk about how do I make sure they have workplace satisfaction. How do I? build trust to identify the issues that are really happening. How do I get their buy-in so that when I make change, they're not totally resistant? Right, it's totally okay to have some members of your team that are resistant to change. We need the doubters to say did you think this through?

33:23 Right? Like I had to teach my team, push back. Like, I have a lot of ideas. You better push back with me. I don't want someone that's like, yay, another change, because now we're just changing for the sake of change. I welcome people that are resistant to change. Force me to prove to you why we need to do this, Totally fine. But anyway, going back to okay, how do I make people efficient? We've got to have that cultural leadership element of it. We can't just be lean and mean right, I love flow charts, I love visualizing. I want to see where does the flow chart not make sense? But at some point that flow chart represents actions by real people, right? And if I don't have, if I'm not good with people, then I can't implement that change. I can't make this process work, right?

34:05 Yep, oh, I love it, beautiful Now. I mean, yeah, go ahead, no go please. Oh, I love it beautiful. Now I mean, yeah, go ahead, no go please. I was gonna say like I was gonna ask you, like what? I know we're talking a lot about me, but what are your instances of? Like you had a manager that was like lean and mean and they had no people touch right like how did that go? Yeah, well, I, it was me sam talk about missteps and falling down the hill. It's Jesse. Jesse's been there guys. Yeah, when? I got introduced to and I'm kind of weird about it. But when I got introduced to Lean I was like I'm going to do this, which at that point in my career it was the last planner system, only that which, in construction, a lot of us were.

34:46 At the point I thought that was like the all there was to be around this lean idea, and so it's a planning and it's a collaborative planning system is what it is. Anyhow, I used it and it helped me and I still credit the tool. The week one, week plan, six week, look ahead, pool planning, blah, blah, blah, all those things, daily huddle. It's got all these elements. Me practicing that as a foreman is what catapulted my career, because I was able to start like. This is how I learned it. I learned last planner system, then, like, I started doing that or trying to do it, then I learned about the eight wastes and then I learned last planner system. Then, like, I started doing that or trying to do it, then I learned about the eight wastes and then I learned about 5S, whereas, like most people, they teach, they approach it different, anyways.

35:31 So it started framing the way I thought and I did. I used that system to do my job, which, just, it was just a function of me spending less time on wasteful things. That made it seem like I was good. I wasn't good, I just spent less time doing wasteful things. That's the bottom line. That's what it was, but it helped me stabilize my environment Now, because it had such an impact on me and the company I was working for was an employee-owned company and we got bonuses by project. So I was pretty good at math and I looked at the estimate and I figured out oh my God, if we? Here's the formula If I install 20 feet of pipe an hour, that's budget, but if I install 22 feet of pipe per hour, I'm 10% under budget.

36:18 That's money in my pocket. So what I started doing was applying that thinking and I started doing lean to people right, like you better, do this, you better. Like it was all about you're inefficient, you're waste. You got to be more productive, work smarter, not harder, and I just set challenging goals and wore people out. How'd that go for you, Jesse? It was not too good. Like people from the we'll say from the office side, I got a lot of attention because, look, he really cares and he's really trying and he's doing all these innovative things. From the field side they're like man, I hope that guy gets in a freaking car wreck on the way home, and that's what it was.

37:01 And so eventually I got to understand like, instead of doing it to them, how can I teach these things instead of dictating it? How can I use the little stuff that I know to solve a particular problem for the guys? And if I solved a problem using my lean wizardry, they would be interested in doing more of it. And that's where the people side came into it. And then eventually it evolved into my understanding, just like you said was the leadership aspect of it, because it absolutely can accelerate the growth of trust. And now my thinking is this all the stuff that I've learned along the way? Thinking, is this all the stuff that I've learned along the way when I use it to build capability and remove hard work for the men and women that are doing the work?

37:49 The rest is gravy period. If I'm trying to optimize for a particular outcome, it's still not bad, but that's like B team. A team is make the work better for the people doing the work. And guess what? Not only do you enhance the quality of life for people, you also get those business outcomes that you're serving. So that's kind of where I'm at on the thing, and I yes, I'm guilty. But it's okay, cause now you're like, I can speak from experience, right? I have so many thoughts on this and I'm going to start with the last thing you said of like people are happier and we've got the business outcomes right.

38:29 Businesses spend billions of dollars on culture initiatives and I'm like, if we start with like operational excellence, we start with lean, all these other things will happen and then, we could say okay, cherry on top little culture initiative, but you can significantly cut back expenses that you're spending just to do the work, but then also expenses on those culture things right. So it's like why are we not starting with that? But let me go back to where you came with your planner and how you learn things in reverse. What's interesting with that is you learned outcomes first and then how to complain If we were to go back to that conversation. Like eight weights, the five S cool, let's teach that. But why does it matter?

39:10 It matters because that's how we go through the planner right and that we've got to start with that. And so where you kind of had the misstep right and where your company also had the misstep with you is two things. One, you had the KPI right, like you're going to get a bonus for these things. But what's the KPI, our key behavior indicators, right. So this is how I say, this is what drives when I teach people we've got to have goal task alignment right Of, like that's how we know we're productive, we're not busy, because what we're doing lines up with what we want to achieve, right, and so our KPI is really just the metric that says we're making progress on our goal, right. But our KBI, the key behavior indicator, this is like okay, this is my daily action, right, so I want my manager to be on budget with my project.

39:55 That's my KPI. But how do I want my manager to do that? What are the? actions, the behaviors that they need to do to meet this KPI Right, and I feel like if that was explained to you, you probably would have pulled back a little bit on the lean and mean right. Oh, sister, yes, and it was explained. I love the KBI right Key behavioral indicator Cause. Yes, again puzzle piece. I had a boss. He passed away but he was my mentor and my boss at the time and he pulled me to the side. He's like Jess, you're great at getting results, you deliver projects. Our clients hate you, our people hate you, but you make money. And I'm like, yeah, I know Like we need better clients and you need to hire better people.

40:38 He's like well, maybe if everybody what's the common factor? well, maybe if everybody what's the common? factor Exactly, and he was very clear. He said if you want to expand your influence in this organization, you need to do two things you need to deliver financial success and you need to develop and grow people and you're failing at one and it's not like it's not bad. You'll have a job. You're going to be the best damn foreman forever and if that's OK with you, then keep doing what you're doing. But if you want to grow your influence and really start exploring the potential that you have, you're going to have to learn how to develop people, and I was out man.

41:18 You want to talk about having a pouty fit like I was not a happy guy. Going to talk about having a pouty fit Like I was not a happy guy. Luckily, the organization was TV industries. They had the mechanism to equip me with this other thing that I needed servant leadership and this other like the philosophy of lean and developing people, et cetera. And so I said, okay, fine, sign me up for these stupid things. And I say like at the moment, that was my attitude, but I'm like ultra grateful for it, because not only did I need to be introduced to it, there was also the learning period of like not resorting. I still had the shadow, my reputation of people, how I treated people like garbage or like tools, like I just treated people like they were disposable, like I just treated people like they were disposable.

42:22 So even when I tried to turn the corner, I would get upset because people still like, were still reacting to me, like I was a bad guy and like no, but I'm not a bad guy anymore, like forget about it, let it go. And they're like, wait a minute, I haven't even given them healing time. So, anyways, it was all of that transition that I had to go through. And to now, if there was, if the program was like the puzzle pieces were fit together between the KPI and the. KBI, my learning curve, the pain would have been shorter and reduced. And so when you're out there supporting clients, serving the people that you serve, is that like part of the structure or part of the learning, this KPI, KBI thing? Yeah, so a lot of times it depends on the type of company I'm walking into, right, but when we're first figuring out, okay, what is the scope of work for how we're going to approach this, depending on where that executive management team is at, I'll say we got to do some lead leadership training before we even dive into understanding these processes and we definitely teach on those things and it really equips them to be able to lead some change.

43:09 And what's awesome is that I mean, if we're doing our job right, we're working ourselves out of a job. Absolutely. The managers of that organization should be able to take charge once we're done, and so what's really cool about that lead leadership training is, before we even dive into their first set of processes, I can see their gears turning and they're like, oh, I thought about this. Or like, oh, we actually I went ahead and I started changing this. Is that okay? I'm like, you don't need my approval, it's not my company, like it's your team, go ahead and go change it. That's awesome, like, just make sure you've got the follow-up, tell me how it goes. Like, did that change? Achieve what you wanted it to right? Like now we've got to talk through that. Going back to, like the accountability and autonomy we talked about before is we can't just change it and then say it's fixed right, we've got to follow up on that.

43:52 But, yeah, it definitely is. It's a big thing to teach them. But I think also on that note is when we dive into processes, I take a very collaborative approach. Right, you introduced me as a people first kind of person like this is collaboration and that's how I'm going to get you on board for change. It's also how I'm going to figure out what's really going on and through that's when we start to have those conversations of okay, what can we do differently, what are the action steps here that are going to lead to this? So people start to, without really understanding or remembering the definitions, without remembering the textbook of KPI and KPI, they start to think that way and that's really what we want. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Well, I'm going to tell you right now I'm stealing that the thinking just being clear about it, right, like yes, we can achieve the outcome.

44:36 Like I have this conversation with construction executives all the time. Like, yeah, like, why are you here? Why do you do this job? Like to make money. Our purpose is we're here to make money and, like construction is a hard ass business. It chews people up and spits them out and it and if you're really great, you're making 4%, which is not a lot of money. I'm like bull, because if you were here, if you really wanted to make money, you would sell pictures of your feet on the Internet. Right, it's way less risk, high margin, like you're not in construction to make money. But so my point is there's a lot of ways to make money, right, there's other illegal things that you could do, and so, if the point is to make money or make earnings, the behavior idea or the behavior conversation is extremely important, because you can do it in nefarious ways that steal life from people, or you can do it in ways that help grow, nurture the talent that's around us, and it's a matter of it comes down to the behaviors of the leader.

45:43 So, anyway, thank you for that. Now the introduction I mentioned and I don't want to leave people hanging or like and also selfishly, right, I want some more nuggets from you. You know I mentioned your experience, your wizardry with virtual assistants and automation. Your wizardry with virtual assistants and automation, yes, what are some of the high friction points for people when you're suggesting or recommending automation or virtual assistants, or which one Actually, here's a better question which one are people most resistant to? Automation or virtual assistants? I feel like it really depends on who we're talking to, right?

46:24 Have you been burned before by one of those things, right? Or then it's like, okay, now there's a reason for our resistance. Let's talk through this, right. Going back to expectations, right? Often, we sometimes learn what our expectations are when we realize we're shit just went not where we wanted it to go. So, with the virtual assistant, I will say it's scary, especially in construction, because in construction we're so used to office. People are going to show up in the office, right. And I'm like, well, you're already used to talking remotely to your field people, right? So what's really the difference here? So we've got to figure that out. And then also, it people are like, well, what's cybersecurity? What are they going to steal?

47:04 I'm like, okay, let's talk through this. Right, what's the VA going to have access to? Right, they're going to probably have an email account under your company organization anyway. So you have full control over permissions. You have full control over shutting their account down if you don't want to work with them anymore. I think another piece of it that's more common, those people think virtual assistant, and they're going to start thinking international assistance, which again is really where that security concern comes in play. And I've worked with people overseas and I've had great experiences with them, but I also understand that's not everyone's cup of tea. So everyone on our team is US based. Everyone on our team lives in the US, has experience as an executive assistant or project coordinator or something right. So we're bringing people in that have a high level of trust or you can trust them at least and they have a high level of experience.

47:50 So, also, we just got to figure out what have you experienced before and what do you believe is true, what are the myths that you've heard about this industry? And we'll start tearing those down. On the automation side again, construction, so used to our clipboards and our pens. Hold on, what are you talking about? Listen, I've got a paper planner. I write things down. Okay, I've got a paper notebook. I don't have an AI note taker that joins my meetings. I write that stuff down because that's how my brain remembers it, right, like I didn't develop study habits in high school. I just wrote it down and I remembered it. I asked the test, right? So I'm fine. But one of the things that we're writing down.

48:30 That could be way easier, right. What are the things that were? I've worked with some companies where they have a field supervisor that is putting the same data points on his notebook and then like four different forms, and then we've got these forms go to different spreadsheets and I'm like what is happening? So at some point I'm like I don't even care if you have a formal project management system that's going to automate. I just care that we are consolidating and we're collaborating efficiently. Like let's just start there, right, and then we can talk about okay, what can we automate? We look at managers. Managers spend 56% of their time on administrative tasks. Why are you paying them so much money to be a high-level thinker and develop your team if they're spending more than half of their time on things an admin, a virtual assistant, can do?

49:16 Let's solve this right. So when we go back to Lean and we think, oh, manufacturing, we think what a robot can do. The robot lives in our computer. Let's let the robot do the work right. And if you're afraid of, oh well, data is going to get lost, something, a step is going to get missed, the automation is going to break. Then we have checks and balances right? Someone's reviewing that report, someone's looking at it at the end of the day, right? So if they see something that's missed, they know to speak up, they. So if they see something that's missed, they know to speak up. They know the steps to follow. So let's just figure out what is the concern here and then what are the. If we need three points for quality control and checks and balances to make you feel good, cool, let's do it. Let's just figure out what that is, so your managers can go do what they're really good at and what you're paying them so much money to go do.

49:56 Right? Oh, and the managers would love you for that. Right Like free from this garbage work that I hate. Right Like the life out of me. That's what it is. I thank you for that because I'm sure there's they're not an L&M family member. It's like squirming when they hear this idea. But no, I know a lot of people, including me, that have been or still are extra apprehensive about this automating and virtual assistant thing. Now I also know, because I was there. We'll just say eight years ago like what do you mean assistant? Like no, I love scheduling my hotel and my flight and my Uber and doing my timesheet and expense reports and scheduling calls 10 times a day.

50:48 Like no, I don't. I hate that. I was like where are we going? with this Jesse Like oh my God, like you're explaining a nightmare. Well, that's most people's jobs, Like you said it right. So much of their time doing that Now. People's jobs, like you said it right, yeah, they spend so much of their time doing that. Now, if for somebody that is VA, curious, right? Virtual assistant curious, or sick and tired of those administrative things what do you like? Generally speaking, doesn't matter what industry what would you recommend people look at or consider in terms of high leverage things or even low leverage things that they could easily hand off to a VA?

51:29 Yeah, so we actually have a guide for this. And if we have no notes. We can have a link for this. It's called our stay focused and delegate guide. It is crafted a little bit more on the entrepreneur side, right. That's going to be a different set of admin tasks than maybe an EA in an established organization, but still a lot of similarities. So hopefully we can link that and you can get. Jesse's like I want to see it right now. Super easy, it's a checklist. But I would start thinking first. Let's think about outcomes. If we go back to expectations big money, talk outcomes and a lot of times we're like I just want someone in my mind who can anticipate my needs. I need someone proactive. I don't want someone like, yeah, they could do my inbox, they could do the scheduling, but I've got to train them. I've got to teach them how to do that. I don't want to do that.

52:10 So I can give you all the lists of things they can do, but ultimately, what you want is someone who's going to anticipate your needs and do some of the thinking for you. And they're going to be able to say, hey, I saw you had this coming up. Can I do X, y and Z for you? Or we met last week. You said you would do this. I don't see it. Do you need help from me, or do you just need me to keep reminding you? And to get to that proactive state we've got to think about, okay, what would they have to know and do for them to be able to do this, for them to be able to say I see you have XYZ coming up? Then, okay, we've got to have some calendar management in that For them to be able to say, okay, I did this job costing report, I did this spreadsheet for you. Okay, they've got to have some data entry responsibilities before this.

52:51 So the easy way to think about it what you'll hear a lot is well, just think about the stuff that frustrates you. Think about what's eating up your time. I'm like I don't always do that, because sometimes I like to hyper-focus and ignore the problems I have going on with my clients and my business and I want this low level admin project. I need that. Okay, like, don't take that away from me. That's my like you said earlier my solitude. That's my cave. I'm going to focus on this and ignore all messages for three hours. Okay, and it's like, do I need to do that? No, can someone else do that for me? Yes, but I need this for myself, right? So, yeah, you could think about what frustrates you, but you could also just think about OK, if I had a mini me, dr Evil, I had a mini me who, like, thought like me, who helped me, but wasn't a manager.

53:33 Now, I'm not going to pay a full time person to sit in the office and shadow me or go to the field and shadow me, Right? What can that part time remote person do so they can start to think on your behalf? And then we'll work back from that. Ah yes, give me two, I think two. Thank you First of all, like thank you, absolutely. We need to put that link so that the L&M family out there can get that Stay focused, the stay focused and delegate guide. Focus, the stay focus and delegate guide. And I'll also just preface it with some of my brethren of the control freak clan. It may give you anxiety as you read it, but it's okay, you don't have to do anything, you're just reading it, right.

54:15 Yeah, just dip your toe in the water. Right, you can take your toe right out. If it feels cold, dip it in, and you know what I'm going to connect the dots. It's going to go back to expectations. Why are we afraid to delegate? Because we don't think they're going to meet our expectations? Do they know our expectations? Do we have processes in place for them to follow? If I give you a recipe? So whenever I teach processes, I'm like how do you write an SOP? Think about a recipe recipe. You've got the title of the food you're making, you've got all the ingredients, the oven temperature, how long it's going to cook for it and all the steps. At Christmas, I make a beef Wellington like Gordon Ramsay. Do I know how to do anything else? Like Gordon Ramsay, absolutely not. But I know how to make a beef Wellington and it tastes damn good. That's fancy too.

54:57 Oh, we'll go back to that. I'm a foodie, right. Like the only way I work out is so that I can eat really good food Okay. Yeah, but I think actually that recipe example is perfect, right, like I turn my nose up at SOPs, but give me the recipe to make that beef Wellington and I'll follow that. It's the same. Yeah, like, come on. SOPs just sound like a corporate asshole. We don't want corporate language. I get that Okay. So really, an SOP. It could be a video use, train you all. If you want to get software, it could be a checklist right? Usually my SOPs are. This is the super detailed version in case you have any questions.

55:38 But here's the flow chart, here's the visual, so you know what's happening. This SOP is your resource when you have questions. You don't have to ask me the question because I don't have time to answer your question. Sometimes, like here and now, you know how to solve this problem because the answer is right here for you. So I think you just got to be yeah, we have this rigid vocabulary, but let's think about again the outcome. What really do we need our team? Or what does our team really need? What's the resource they need? How do we equip them with that? Right, yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. Oh my God, I feel like you just gave a free lesson to me and a bunch of people that are going to be listening. I'll send you my invoice later. It's fine. No, no, send it to my virtual assistant. Oh yeah, there we go, we'll have them pay for it.

56:19 You don't even see it, it's fine. Oh, my goodness. Well, this has been amazing. You and I, on our first call, we talked about a mastermind. Yes, we did yeah. So what like? What is that? What's the idea there? That, because you and I hadn't even prepped for this. But what are you thinking there? I volunteer a lot with business organizations, mostly because I'm a mom, I've got two kids, my husband travels. I can't volunteer a lot outside of work hours because I've got little toddlers that's okay. So what works for me is volunteering in business organizations, and so I've done several idea labs and masterminds, and really what I've noticed is, again, we come back to like I like to brainstorm with people, I like to ask those questions, and I think sometimes we don't always have the space to do that.

57:08 Even myself, I'm part of some networking groups that claim to have masterminds. I'm like I don't feel comfortable asking any of these people questions, and so I think something I would have really loved, not only when I was an employee in the corporate world, but also now as an entrepreneur is I just want to show up and ask questions Like I have this idea, I have this problem, I'm struggling with this. Right, what are your ideas? Have you dealt with this before? Right, like Jesse, you're saying you're learning from me, but I learned from you, from your LinkedIn content, from the chats that we've had. Right, the chats that we've had. Right, like, I'm always open to learning, and so I think a mastermind is really just creating that space for people where they know they can show up and they can have the answers, or at least brainstorm some possible answers for the challenges they have.

57:51 And if you don't have any, I mean I've shown up to masterminds, I don't have any questions, but I just sit and listen. I'm like, oh, I think I had that problem. Let me just deal with that. Yeah, so what I'm hearing is it's like a confluence or a group of folks that have a shared experience to have a conversation and share experience. And so, in this context, what I'm smelling the Wellington that you're cooking is like a group of people entrepreneurs or people that are working on a project, launching their own thing. Let's have a conversation like a group conversation to share problems, ask questions of each other, kick ideas around.

58:33 How close am I? Yeah, you're pretty on it, right, Like we want that peer advisory group right. Like corporate organizations. They've got that board to say that's a dumb idea or this is a good idea right, and so you don't always have that, even whether you're an entrepreneur or you're a manager. Sometimes as a manager, you also don't have that support, right? So like, let's come together, let's just be your peer advisory group and let's solve this together, because I care about your success, right? Like that's the most important thing is like there's people that are involved, that are not just there for their own self interests, but actually care about you getting ahead. So, all right, I'm sold and I got a name for it. It's called do the damn thing.

59:17 Advisory board. Maybe it's the get your shit together board. We'll just change it every time based on the questions. Right, Like you have the idea. Why have you not done it? Just do the damn thing, or what are you doing? Get your shit together. If anyone has any other ideas of vulgar ways, we can name this group. Please, Jesse that that voicemail and LinkedIn, and we'll all get creative. Yes, well, I mean, but I'm serious, you and I we had that kind of conversation. I have this thing that I call the whispers, where I look for data points or signals, or I pay attention to them, and when I see little signals that I call whispers, in weird places that are on the same trajectory, it's like, oh, there's something there, I need to do something with it.

1:00:06 And so there's been several conversations besides the one you and I've had, that I've been a part of groups that are not even really associated with each other, or this idea, this mastermind I'll say condition or lack thereof has come up, and so, yes, we're joking, don't know exactly. I like the flip right, get your shit together. Advisory board and the do the damn thing. Advisory board, because, yes, the puzzling again, but for real, I'm going to be sending out a calendar invite here, probably within the next five weeks. So actually five weeks from today. Within that timeframe, samantha, we'll send out a calendar invite.

1:00:47 We're going to do something. Now. If you're listening to this, it's probably a week from the release date of this episode. So, like Samantha said, hit me up, dm something if you're interested. We got to do it. What do you say? Yeah, I am so on board because I was whispering to myself years ago and I almost started something called. Build your Luck because successful businesses are lucky, they're built, and I just I never got it off the ground, and so I am so open to the opportunity to collaborate on this. Because I think also, sometimes we show up to certain groups and we're like no one here is ambitious as I am. Or show up to some groups and they're like it's all namaste mindset mastermind, and I'm like I got Jesus in my pocket, I don't need your namaste chakras, thank you very much.

1:01:36 Like let's move on Right. And so like I'm like okay, definitely there are moments where I have mindset blocks. Help me walk through that, and that's when you get to do the damn thing right. But yeah, give me a space to show up and also express that relator skill that I love so much of like helping others achieve a goal. Yeah, yeah, we can, and we can also smile. I can have fun while telling you serious shit, like that is a magic skill. I know because I my buddies used to the guys I used to work with in the day. They would say, jess, you're wicked, there's something you're evil. I'm like, okay, why? I've seen you write people up, suspend people and terminate people smiling like well, I'm not smiling, like I'm smiling because I'm uncomfortable and I also know that I have exhausted my resources to give that person the support to achieve the goal, achieve the intended outcome, and they're going to be better off somewhere else, like I did everything I possibly can.

1:02:39 This is just not the best place for them and it's uncomfortable. So, yeah, I could smile and do the same thing, like come on, man, get it together. You got to go. I remember when we first started chatting and you kind of posed the question of, like, what's something some people don't know about you, and I was like, yeah, like, I'll smile and make you feel good, but I'll tell you how it is. Right, like, what's the point of me making you feel good if, like, we're not going to do something with it? That's like companies spending billions of dollars on culture but everyone actually really hates working there because nothing makes sense. Right, like, let's ask the tough questions and let's go for it. Yeah, I think some people might get their feathers ruffled because that's not nice, but I think it's kind right Like, let's be direct, let's be clear.

1:03:26 I'm not worried about hurting your feelings. I'm actually more committed to serving you than I am making you feel all lovey dovey. Yeah, and that is I'm going to go back to, and this is this could apply to males, but I'm going to bring it back to the feminine here, because someone asked me, like, oh, like, how do you always show up in rooms that are like male dominated Right? It's like, well, there's like a female authoritative version to take onto this right. Like I can tell you how it is because I was empathetic with you before, I took the time to listen to you and to understand what you were going through and to understand why these challenges matter to you and what your employees are feeling. And now I can tell you how it is because I have that trust with you, right, and that's something that, again, men can do.

1:04:11 This I'm not trying to say you can't do this, but like that's something that comes naturally to me, I think partly because I am a woman. I'm, like, made to kind of listen to you a little bit. Right, and so, yeah, and I think you can't just tell someone how it is if you don't understand what it is, if you don't have that compassion. Right, and that's I mean. You look at, I'm a mom, right, so I'm going to pull on inside out If anyone else is a mom and you see inside out and you understand why sadness matters, right, we can't just be happy and tickle our way through shit. We've got to, like, just take the time to be empathetic and understand why we're upset in the first place. Okay, now we've got the mindset done, we've got our feelings out. Now let's go do something about it, right? Yes, yes, that's all I'm going to say.

1:04:56 I like to make things as simple as possible for people to understand. And a lot of times that just comes from food and being a mom. Folks, if y'all didn't, if you can't grasp that, you got problems. So well said, samantha. I mean frank, concise, clear, totally relatable, Like oh, that's it. I'm going to leave it there now, so we're going to keep on talking, but you got to work out. You motivated me to work out last time, so I'm going to make sure I need to work out? No, I'm not, but you said you were. And since you motivated me. I want to motivate you, so we're going to wrap it up with the closing question.

1:05:40 You ready? It's a simple one what is the promise you are intended to be? It's not a simple question. You want that to be it. You want to, like, make people feel less scared of the question by saying that, but it's not simple. Okay, you know what? I thought a lot. I knew my answer the first time you told me you were going to ask me this question. I did go back and forth on how I was going to share this, and I'm. You know what I actually wore my God is good shirt today, and earlier I said I've got Jesus in my pocket, right. The promise I'm intended to be I do not know because it is not something I decide. So I will just I'll say that very straight up it's not something I decide.

1:06:20 The promise I'm intended to be is something that's going to come from the Holy Spirit and for God for me. And so I, if someone's listening and they're like, hey, I'm not faith-based first off, message me. I love controversial conversations. I said I'm a relator, like let's talk about it. I'm not trying to convert you, but let's talk about it, right, but so? But also, if you're not a faith-based person, really what that means, at least for me, is I'm going to be humble, I'm going to really try to serve, I'm going to be open to new opportunities because I don't know what my promise is going to be. I see people that are maybe purpose life coaches. I'm like you can't tell me my purpose, my purpose don't come from you. Like you don't know my purpose. Because I don't know my purpose and my purpose is probably ever changing. My purpose today is going to change tomorrow because of who I'm going to be around and how he's going to use me for that Right.

1:07:03 So that that's my answer. I don't know what my promise is. I just know I'm supposed to be a humble servant. So oh my God, I love your best answer. I love it Well done. And folks go back and replay that like for real. So many of I mean I think we're just a lot of us get trapped in this, thinking like I have to definitively articulate my purpose. That's measured to KPIs and KBIs and every other freaking. I Like it doesn't have to be that way, right, Like I don't know, maybe my purpose is just to be a servant and walk on the path and let the path reveal itself.

1:07:45 Oh my God, amazing. Did you have fun? I had so much fun. This was great. This was awesome. Good, good. Well, thank you for your time, Miss Samantha. This was too much fun. We're going to get in trouble. Evil laughs. I'm ready.