Transforming your Employees into Resilient Leaders through Ethical Influence

Speaker 1 High performers that become leaders that kind of push from out in front, they tend to be very competitive. They tend to not take no for an answer.

Speaker 1 They tend to be very charismatic in being able to share their vision. But what sometimes gets lost in that process is that

Speaker 1 they take total responsibility for delivering the results and leading with their passion, but sometimes forget that along the way, their job is actually to build, is not to deliver the result, but to curate leadership teams that deliver the result.

Speaker 2 Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business.

Speaker 2 Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mello.

Speaker 2 Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. I got a really special guest.
I'm really, really excited about today. The Mr.
Famous Keith Mercurio.

Speaker 2 He's an expert in sales, leadership, communication, training, and development. He's based out of Wilmington, North Carolina.
He's a service titan senior director of executive success.

Speaker 2 He started that about two years ago. He's the founder and CEO of Ethical Influence Global.
And in the past, he worked with Nexstar. He was the director of training.

Speaker 2 For more than seven years, he was at Nexstar, where he built and refined over 20 transformational training programs, oversaw the development of 15-person training staff, conducted over 120 events per year, and trained over 7,000 people annually.

Speaker 2 Quite the resume there, Keith.

Speaker 1 That's very nice of you to say. I laugh about that resume because it's tailor-made for like one thing in this world, and it's what I do right now at Service Titan.

Speaker 2 And so having come from the industry it's kind of funny how i managed to meander my way into this place in life certainly a non-linear path you know from every angle all i hear is just amazing things about you this is what we're we're hearing right now greatest trainer of our generation bar none and a big reason why i am a trainer it's just that unfortunately it says facebook user We said, two of the best in the space.

Speaker 2 You know, Tom Howard and I were together. I mentioned this to you, but he just, he's a raving fan of yours.
And, you know, my psychology days make me think of like Carl Jung.

Speaker 2 So you're very unorthodox, but you get results. And I'd love for you just to tell everybody a little bit about yourself and just what your experience was like at Nexstar.

Speaker 2 I think Jack Tesser is one of the best leaders I've ever met.

Speaker 2 you know transitioning to julian i'd love to hear just and then what it's like at service titan and just your traveling and and speaking experience and history.

Speaker 1 Well, you know what? Let's let's start there with the, because to talk about myself would be to talk about the people who have guided me, no question.

Speaker 1 And I think there's a great story I just shared about Jack Tester the other day. I was a brand new trainer for Nexstar.
I was about eight months into my career there.

Speaker 1 And no need to mince any words about this. I mean, I was like off to a rock star start kind of golden boy.

Speaker 1 in my first little bit of stretch of time there was going out on the road booking all these trainings killing it, coming back with wonderful reviews.

Speaker 1 And I would come back in the office and take my victory laps and go out on the road again.

Speaker 1 And there was about eight months in, I went out with this girl that I was dating at the time and we stayed out too late, made bad choices, and I ended up late for work the next day.

Speaker 1 And on my drive to work, I was starting to build my case about how I was going to react.

Speaker 1 to the reaction of Jack Tester, you know, how I was going to point out how every single, you know, day I've been on time, I've never missed, you know, I haven't been out for a day, delivered nothing but results.

Speaker 1 And essentially was, I don't know if you're like this, Tommy, you're very, you're such a different personality than me.

Speaker 1 I'm not sure, but I build a lot of conversations, arguments, debates in my head prior to and outside of all the conversations that I ever have happen. And so I'm building this one in my head.

Speaker 1 And I get to the office kind of guarded and ready for a confrontation. And Jack looks up and he goes, buddy, come on in here.
And he brings me into his office and he goes, hey, you okay?

Speaker 1 And I was like, well, yeah, yeah, I'm okay. And immediately, just everything that I had built up melted away.
He was like, have a seat. He's like, geez, you've never been late like this before.

Speaker 1 Everything all right? I'm like, yeah, you know, I made some bad choices, found myself. away from my car and everything else.
And he was like, okay.

Speaker 1 He's like, well, listen, that'll happen. He's, you know, I was worried about you.
I'm glad everything's okay. He said, you know, and this is why we have PTO.

Speaker 1 He's like, sometimes stuff like this happens and you can always just call in and take a day.

Speaker 1 He said, I'm going to go ahead and I am going to dock you a PTO day for today. And you can either take it, head home and just enjoy your day or you can stay and work.
It's up to you.

Speaker 1 But, you know, that's. That's how I'm going to handle this, just where we're a few hours into the day here, as late as you are.
And,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 that was it. And he said, you're all right.
And I was like, yeah, absolutely. He's like, all right, you know, give me a hug.

Speaker 1 And I just walked out of his office and I was like, oh, my God, what was that?

Speaker 2 What was that?

Speaker 1 And as I would go on to study and, you know, really look into the art and science of leadership, you know, what I witnessed was just, it was an astounding demonstration of the fact that he genuinely cared about me.

Speaker 1 He was worried about me.

Speaker 1 He also held really clear standards.

Speaker 1 He let me know how I could handle it differently moving forward. And he checked in to make sure that everything was okay on my end at the beginning and at the end of it.

Speaker 1 And that was a lesson that would resonate with me for a lifetime. Well, ever since at least.
And I think when you talk about like unorthodox, there's no question I'm unorthodox.

Speaker 1 It's one of the greatest compliments I can hear, frankly, is when people tell me that my stuff is different than anything they've ever seen. That means the world to me.

Speaker 1 And it's not that I do it to try to be different, but it's nice to know that somehow there's a different way of seeing an age-old study of influence and leadership.

Speaker 1 But it's moments like that that where I was led in such a beautiful way that really helped me understand what great leadership looks and sounds and feels like.

Speaker 1 And it's taking all of those elements into consideration. And yet notice he still held a high standard.

Speaker 1 But how many leaders would have dropped a hammer, been felt completely justified, written somebody up?

Speaker 1 You know, I mean, in our industry, I mean, the trades, that's like the number one tool that managers lean into is a write-up, as though that's leadership.

Speaker 1 You know, I draw from influences like that along the way.

Speaker 1 And that's what informs a lot of my style of looking at how we can be both compassionate and hold people to the highest standards and ourselves, most of all.

Speaker 2 You know, it's interesting because when you spoke to Simon Sinek, up on stage, one of the things I really was fascinated by is what he mentioned.

Speaker 2 I don't know if it was on stage or if I just saw saw one of his videos, but he said, when I go to four seasons and the people talk to me, he's like, they genuinely care.

Speaker 2 It's the caliber of people that they hire.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I really feel like at A1,

Speaker 2 you know, obviously I'm here all day, every day, but the people are like, it's outside of work too. It's not just at work.

Speaker 2 It's like we come into work, but I don't mind coming in on a Monday morning, you know, and it's like the caliber of people genuinely care.

Speaker 2 And I think that's what you're talking about: is Jack, when I first met Jack, everybody at Nexstar, this was 2017, they said to me, you should really try to get Nexstar to train garage door companies.

Speaker 2 So everybody was rooting for me. And they're like, there's Jack, go talk to him.

Speaker 2 And I said, hey, listen, I'm a big fan of yours. I've read your book.
I've actually used Gail, the same person, or not Gail, Helena, that helped kind of put your book together. And we're talking.

Speaker 2 And I said, what would you think about getting in the garage? He goes, nope, not going to happen. Absolutely not.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, all righty then. Nice to meet you.
But he just to the point. And I've watched him train people.
I was at his breakout session at Pantheon years ago.

Speaker 2 And just the one-on-ones, his by far the most disciplined cadence,

Speaker 2 just to the point person I've ever met.

Speaker 1 Well, he was a world-class operator as a CEO. Like, I can't say enough about how much Nexstar taught me about the importance of operational excellence in a business.

Speaker 1 Because I tend to lean much more towards the transformational and inspirational elements of leadership. That's where my kind of heart and passion is.

Speaker 1 I had a fair bit of, I think, a charismatic ability that I really leaned heavily on in my early days, especially to influence people.

Speaker 1 What Jack really imprinted on all of us at Nexstar was operational excellence was what would breed

Speaker 1 the grounds for the ability to genuinely care, for the ability to bring in that inspirational transformational influence.

Speaker 1 And so I learned in my time at Nexstar, you know, we always wanted to balance our trainings so that the ship didn't list too far one way or another towards the transformational or towards the operational, that it's about striking that balance of both.

Speaker 1 And so your very quick recognition of, I mean, I got to study it for eight years. You picked it up instantaneously of his operational excellence and structure is spot on.

Speaker 1 I mean, he was a tremendous operator.

Speaker 2 He's the ultimate.

Speaker 2 I mean, if I had to look up, you've read the one thing probably by Gary Keller, or, you know, there's a couple books, Essentialism, a focus is like when I called Service Titan and I called Aura, I talked to nine sales reps.

Speaker 2 No one would let me into Service Titan. They said, nope, we only do HVAC Plumbing Electrical.
And I got on the phone with Ara

Speaker 2 and he said, you could surely understand that we do not want to get involved with any other.

Speaker 2 We want to master these things. And I said, Ara,

Speaker 2 I truly understand and I appreciate where you're coming from, but I don't take no for an answer. And if I got to start an HVAC company to fix my way into here, and he said, you know what?

Speaker 2 He said, I've never heard anybody with such passion that wants to get on. He goes, I'm going to send out 10 people.

Speaker 2 usually we send out one i'm going to set you up for success but it's on you to make it happen and um i'll never forget he trusted me and service titan has changed our company dramatically it's the best

Speaker 1 and and you've changed service titan tommy i mean you know you go back to this and first of all i can vouch for the in my short experience with you the premise of your unwillingness to take no for an answer And in fact, you texted me and then called me on a Sunday to recruit me into a speaking role.

Speaker 1 And this is what I said to you. Actually, it's what I said to my wife.
I turned to my wife and I said, you know, it's people like this that make the world go forward. I said, it's not my style.

Speaker 1 I'm much more sort of a coach, an advisor. I struggle to just make the decisions and move forward.

Speaker 1 It's people like you that when I partner with or I work alongside, where, you know, I mean, you are always looking out at the horizon. And I think I said it to you this way.

Speaker 1 And then when I partner with people like you, I'm able to maybe bring a little bit more awareness to the possible wake that you leave as you drive forward.

Speaker 1 But it's that personality type is a really big deal. And in the spirit in which I can be as complimentary of Next R and Jack,

Speaker 1 that tendency to just say no immediately. though I appreciate the clarity of vision and guardrails that Jack operated with, I think similar to what we've seen.

Speaker 1 I mean, Service Titan has grown immensely because of our expansion into GarageDoor and our partnership with you.

Speaker 1 And I think similarly, I mean, I would certainly nudge Nexstar to say, hey, maybe it's time to revisit this, especially with, but now you've gone ahead and started to build your own version of Nextstar in the GarageDoor industry.

Speaker 1 So again, you know, this is your own way of not taking no, even if the no was. joining Nextstar, you said, okay, well, you know, I mean, this is what I heard was fuck it, I'll build my own Nexstar.

Speaker 1 So that's what I love about, you know, partnering with and seeing people like you with that vision and that tenacity, which,

Speaker 1 again, is very different than my own style. And so that's part of this work is coming to admire and appreciate styles that are dramatically different than my own.

Speaker 1 You know, leadership looks like a lot of different things. And this idea that it's supposed to be one way is, I think, really myopic.

Speaker 2 You know, what's really interesting is I met Julian at Cristiano's event, and

Speaker 2 I never met him before and I didn't even know who he was at the time. He kind of came into that role and really was unknown to anybody that didn't have his training.

Speaker 2 And all of a sudden, he created a huge name for himself. And I'll tell you, I just want to pull up a text message because this is the way Julian is.

Speaker 2 First of all, he invited me out to Minnesota and I spent three days with him. And just, I mean, we tour up the town.
And I just got a text from him on the 5th at 3.09 p.m.

Speaker 2 It said, thinking of you sending love, peace, and power. I hadn't spoken to him in months.
And he's a lot different than Jack. I'd love to hear.

Speaker 2 You know, I don't want to spend too much time on Nexstar, but it was a big piece of your history in the trade. So

Speaker 2 what would you say the difference in leadership and just your experience with Julian? I don't know. I guess he came on as Jack was leaving or when you left or how did that?

Speaker 1 No, so what's what's really fascinating, I mean, my relationship with Julian is probably as strong as there was in the time at Nexstar.

Speaker 1 So Julian came on as an implementation coach and then became the training manager.

Speaker 1 And as a result, reported to me. So he was, he and I were just a one-two team for many years.
And I would attribute the majority of the success of the training organization at Nexstar to Julian.

Speaker 1 I was sharing earlier that I'm good as an advisor. I'm very thoughtful.
I know those are strengths of mine.

Speaker 1 As far as like the decisive, you know, moving forward and implementing, that's an area that I'm not strong.

Speaker 1 That's where Julian, among other things, he's got a lot of gifts, but he's also incredibly strong as an implementer and a doer.

Speaker 1 And so what happened when we started working together was that ideas of mine that I'd been ruminating on for years suddenly started to A, get improved by him and then B, implemented, you know, with him.

Speaker 1 And so i think a lot of the the stuff that happened at nexstar that gets attributed to any of my leadership was very much the result of his tenacity and his ability to move forward and he did so without any need for the limelight or you know making sure that he got credit and interestingly enough In the end, he got all the credit, right?

Speaker 1 He became CEO. So there's a lesson in there, too, that he wasn't hungry for, you know, the constant need for recognition, but just kept his head down and kept doing the really hard work.

Speaker 1 And so then he became VP. So that was an interesting conversation in that he had been reporting to me and then he got elevated to VP and I started reporting to him.

Speaker 1 My first thought was like, man, this is great for him. And my second thought was, I'm really glad I was a cool boss to him because now he's my boss.

Speaker 1 So I felt like that was a little lesson in its own right. Like how you treat people, you know, should never vary dependent on

Speaker 1 reporting structure. That's for sure.
In fact, it's a really important lesson for leaders to look at.

Speaker 1 If any part of you is leaning into your status, your role, feeling like you don't have authority because you don't have a title or anything like that, you're looking at all the wrong things that make leadership count.

Speaker 1 And, you know, Julian, Julian always operated as a leader, regardless of his role. You know, he thought with the same level of ownership as a CEO when he was an implementation coach.

Speaker 1 And that's why he's had the success and the really extraordinary rise in Nexstar.

Speaker 1 And I think is, you know, bringing a really fresh way of thinking of things, as well as maintaining the legacy from what I understand of all of Jack's operational excellence.

Speaker 2 You know, Julian flew out here. He said, listen, you've been to my house basically.
I want to come see yours and hang out with you in Phoenix.

Speaker 2 And he sat right here and he's very calm and content and he smiles.

Speaker 2 And he goes, listen, I've never seen anybody going at your pace.

Speaker 2 He's like, my only question for you is at the speed of which you're going, the one thing that I'm going to tell you right now is that you're going to have a battle building leaders.

Speaker 2 And he said, you're going to have to pull leaders from out of the industry. And I said, I know.
I said, one of the things I do is I pride myself on going outside of the industry.

Speaker 2 I don't really hire a whole lot of people with experience, but that will always resonate with me when he sat right there. And he said,

Speaker 2 you need a complete plan of how to take somebody that's okay, that has natural abilities and bring them up to the level of a leader, because it's the hardest thing in the trades is to get amazing leaders.

Speaker 2 And that's something that. We've struggled with.
We've gone to every leadership training, read every book, and it's very, very difficult because the one thing you can't train is passion.

Speaker 2 It's hard to get people excited and to see the vision. And I'm just curious from your point of view,

Speaker 2 leadership development. You know, Aura was a natural leader.
I look at somebody like Ken Goodrich. They're just, they're born leaders.
And then some people develop.

Speaker 2 I think I've developed a lot and I still have a long, long way to go. But what is your thought on that?

Speaker 1 So I want to kind of answer this. thoughtfully.
There's a couple of things I would say. Initial blush is I balk at this idea that there's such a thing as leaders so much as there's leadership.

Speaker 1 Leadership is how we're being,

Speaker 1 you know, and what we're doing on a daily basis. I'm hesitant to ever label someone a leader or not a leader too aggressively as though that's a constant way of being.

Speaker 1 I mean, great leaders lack in their leadership all the time. And I think we need to be careful about that.

Speaker 1 Does that make sense? Yeah. Or do I need to dive deeper though?

Speaker 2 You're saying the way that I'm taking that is leadership is a quality that comes out in leaders and other people.

Speaker 2 You said Julian at one time, you know, reported to you and maybe wasn't necessarily involved with a bunch of it, but he had the qualities of that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. There's great leadership.
And again, this goes back to like this idea of natural born leaders. And I hear what you mean.
There's a premise around that.

Speaker 1 But comparatively, for example, John Maxwell says that leaders make leaders who make leaders, right?

Speaker 1 So this is what Julian was talking to, you know, to look at, and I don't have enough information to say one way or the other, but what I suspect he was warning of or advising towards is this idea, you know, Tommy, high performers that become leaders that kind of push from out in front, they tend to be very competitive.

Speaker 1 They tend to not take no for an answer. They tend to be very charismatic in being able to share their vision.
But what sometimes gets lost in that process is that

Speaker 1 they take total responsibility for delivering the results and leading with their passion, but sometimes forget that along the way, their job is actually to build, is not to deliver the result, but to curate leadership teams that deliver the result.

Speaker 1 And so, you know, if I were coaching you, I would be asking you, what are you doing to build the team that's delivering the result right now?

Speaker 1 What kind of relationships are you building among your leaders? Not with you and your leaders, but among your leaders. Like what are their relationships with each other?

Speaker 1 And what are you doing to ensure that they're learning to trust and support each other to succeed?

Speaker 1 Because if you are a naturally competitive person, and if winning is natural part of your makeup, you've got to be careful that as you multiply the leaders in your business, that they're not just attempting to replicate your path because there's only one of you, but there's many of them.

Speaker 1 And they may end up competing against each other instead of collaborating to learn to win as a team.

Speaker 1 So that's where I would build off of what Julian was saying as something that I would just keep an eye on.

Speaker 1 But I can't say one way or another without you having some really honest self-reflection on that and then probably talking to your leadership team. You know, and one of the questions that you ask.

Speaker 1 a leader is if they're being completely honest, when they come to their monthly or quarterly or annual, you know, budget review, would they rather have hit the budget while the other departments didn't, or would they rather have been the one that missed the budget while all the other departments hit?

Speaker 1 And what this does by forcing this binary either or way of thinking is explore whether the team win or the individual win is more important to them.

Speaker 2 You know, we read five dysfunctions of a team as a company.

Speaker 2 And unfortunately, at 110% growth a year, you get siloed and you start caring a lot about your current team, but not about the whole necessarily. And it's an individual aspect.

Speaker 2 I wouldn't say that is an overarching factor of everybody. But

Speaker 2 I hired a president of the company to come on and fill the gaps that I wasn't able to fill because I know I've got a lot of issues. with my leadership.
So

Speaker 2 one of the things that we discussed was he said, listen, I got to really evaluate you for a few months. And when he came back to me and he said, listen,

Speaker 2 you are not the issue. You're zero of the issue because in fact, you're not as involved as I would have expected you to be.
I didn't even go to our budget meeting.

Speaker 2 I said, listen, I know what I'm going to do at our budget meeting. I know that I can't shut up.
I know that I'm going to affect everybody's mind and I'm going to get too involved. So

Speaker 2 I said to Dan, I said, here's what I'm going to do. I said, you guys do not come back to me with some bullshit.
I said, I want some real goals. And I said, I want to know how we're going to get there.

Speaker 2 But you guys build the road because this is the road you guys got to travel on. And it's not fair for me to influence it.

Speaker 2 But I said, as far as marketing and sales, I'll get these sales averages up with the help of the team and everybody. And I guarantee you, we'll bring the leads.

Speaker 2 And I failed in a couple of markets and we're working on it. And I've got a couple of great people working on it.

Speaker 2 But overall, I've chose to opt out of a lot of the meetings i used to attend because i know myself and i i know that it's so hard for me to sit there when someone says a goal

Speaker 2 and it's it's like they don't push hard enough so they call it tommy goals they said here's here's the bottom that we need to hit here's the stretch goal and then here's the tommy goal

Speaker 1 so i love this and tommy the thing i would point out though is that whether you were there or not, because you said that, you were there.

Speaker 1 Now,

Speaker 1 because you said, don't come back with some bullshit, come back with real goals, you were there.

Speaker 1 And in fact, what I would caution and coach you on is the amount of pressure that that creates, but ambiguous pressure.

Speaker 1 What does that really mean? What's going to satisfy Tommy? What does this really look like? And so here's where I would challenge you. I would say, well, you simultaneously say that.

Speaker 1 You know, I want you to come back with some real goals.

Speaker 1 One of the great leaders I've seen in this regard is Brad Caspier down at Radiant and what that organization has done. And Brad Casepear just asked one follow-up caveat to that, Tommy.

Speaker 1 He said, you know, what do our super stretch like party goals look like? And if you agree to them,

Speaker 1 are we going to have fun getting there? Are we going to love getting there? Because I am not going to sign this team up for a goal,

Speaker 1 which, by the way, is arbitrary and made up, right i mean it's an extrapolation of what we've done against what we think possibility is and then we make it and then we create a relationship with it

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 within creating that relationship is this going to burn our people out are we going to exhaust our team members along the way are people going to start having not being home for dinner at night with their families all because this goal became more important than anything else so as you create you have such incredible influence, and especially with your team, but in general, just across everything you touch.

Speaker 1 I mean, I've watched it now the same way Julian acknowledged. It's an extraordinary pace that you're operating at.

Speaker 1 But are you putting pressure on people to also

Speaker 1 make sure that they can enthusiastically opt into this goal because it's something that they truly want?

Speaker 1 And by the way, It's okay, Tommy, if your culture of your organization is we work at these types of paces and people know that signing up, so be it. That's okay.

Speaker 1 You can have any type of company you want.

Speaker 1 You just need to make sure that it's being transparently communicated. And if that other thing is a concern to you, that you also put pressure on them to think about that too.

Speaker 2 I completely agree with that. I think the main goal.
When I wrote down a billion dollars on that whiteboard at the last office, I wrote a straight line from the top right to the bottom left.

Speaker 2 And I put five grids.

Speaker 2 and I said, at an average tech of 500,000, I need 2,000 technicians. And then I figured out the leads and I called three managers into my office and I said, what would we need to do today?

Speaker 2 We would need a badass training center. We would need three full-time recruiters and five full-time trainers.

Speaker 2 And my biggest goal was helping them realize what needs to happen today.

Speaker 2 And so what I did, actually, I just got off the phone with Jim before we jumped on this call and we designed a calculator for the technicians.

Speaker 2 And rather than give them a goal of revenue, I said, listen, what are your dreams? And we've really worked hard to figure out what people's goals and dreams are.

Speaker 2 Home ownership, better credit, kids in private school, 10-year anniversary, golfing with my dad on a trip.

Speaker 2 And so one of the things I try to push is, you want this, that you're going to make some sacrifices along the way.

Speaker 2 And we need to remind, you know, whether it's your wife or husband and kids, that this is for the good of everybody. But if your goal is to be at home at 4 p.m.
every day, I'm good with that.

Speaker 2 So I think it's important to understand. And I think Tom told you I've given away 21% of the company to staff here.
And they sprint because of what they want.

Speaker 2 I know they don't care about hitting a billion dollars. I mean, that's an arbitrary number that I chose because it's a milestone for us.
But ultimately, they're all sprinting at the same pace.

Speaker 2 Not everybody, but they're all rolling in the same direction for sure. because

Speaker 2 there's a lot of millionaires going to come out of this company. And that's what excites me.

Speaker 2 I mean, ultimately, yes, I love being a company that's on the cutting edge of just technology and what we're doing.

Speaker 2 But it's important to me that they hit their goals, which is sacrifice, it's goal setting, it's habits. And it's more important is determination.

Speaker 2 So for me, it's, I got to figure out what motivates you and just remind you of what you want. Because the way to get there is not going out and buying a snowmobile or a boat.

Speaker 2 The way to get there is to be very, very determined. and you've got to be um disciplined yeah

Speaker 2 and what i mean by discipline is just sometimes you might have to work a saturday but i don't care for my management it's unlimited pto you take off if you want to work three days a week and you're hitting your goals i don't care if someone walked in late i have no idea i'm not monitoring the front door we're looking for them they work from home half the time So I'm a lot different than Jack in that aspect.

Speaker 2 I'm like, look,

Speaker 2 I really don't care how much you work. You know, I love if you put in a 70-hour week.
I love it if you put in a 10-hour week. It's just, I'm not a person that's counting hours ever.

Speaker 2 So I don't know if that resonates. Well, no, I think this it does.

Speaker 1 And just keep an eye on that.

Speaker 1 You know, I mean, this is like, you know, we talked about Ara and his leadership.

Speaker 1 I mean, one of the things I've watched Aura focus deeply on was the unknown impact of his, what he didn't even realize was intimidation with a comment like that one.

Speaker 1 You know, just don't come back to me with bullshit. I trust you guys.
Just don't come back to me with any bullshit, right? I know you'll do the right thing.

Speaker 1 It's like a dad saying to their kid, I know you're going to make the right choices tonight, Tommy, right? Like there's a certain pressure that comes with that that we need to make sure as

Speaker 1 leaders that we're paying attention in our leadership, that we're paying attention to those comments and what message they do send. And that's not a criticism of it.
It's just an awareness, right?

Speaker 1 You may become more aware of it and say, I'm good with it. And that's exactly what our culture is.

Speaker 1 Now, a couple of things I want to point out for anybody who's kind enough to be listening to this right now.

Speaker 1 What you do so well, the two things that really strike me in the conversations I've had with you and surprise me, by the way, I'm going to say this just as candidly as I can.

Speaker 1 You're a far more evolved and thoughtful leader than I expected you to be from whatever. little bit of like Facebook persona of yours I had experienced.

Speaker 1 I have really marveled at the depth of your thinking, your basis of learning, all the books that you actually do read and do draw from. It's very impressive.
And I mean that.

Speaker 1 And there's two things in what you described in your story. One

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 when you set that goal, working backwards to say, what do we need to do today to make that future a possibility? This is just good goal setting.

Speaker 1 And it's astonishing how much people struggle with this, how much organizations struggle with this.

Speaker 1 And that's why, like, like, whether it's, you know, reading rocket fuel attraction or getting into any of the other kind of operating systems out there and understanding goal setting, it's so important that when you set a goal, that there's then using the calendar to say what are the quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily activities and resources necessary to achieve this.

Speaker 1 The other thing is to make sure,

Speaker 1 I'll just say this as a one-off, we can revisit it, that it's in line with your your just cause or your vision. That's another really important thing that we can talk about from Cinex work.

Speaker 1 But the second thing that you do exceptionally is with your team members, and my God, please folks, like hear this,

Speaker 1 that you do not give them revenue targets and now expect that to matter to them.

Speaker 1 This is what creates resentment, frustration, disconnect inside of organizations is we give everyone static targets. And now we say, this is now your goal.
This is what you should be achieving.

Speaker 1 And we create for our team members and technicians and salespeople these relationships with these goals that they might be unrealistic. They might be unfair.
They didn't come from me.

Speaker 1 They're just about this. There's no attachment to any meaning in it.
And frankly, it's not even a good way to coach people.

Speaker 1 That would be like coaching everyone in your batting lineup that they should have a 330 average.

Speaker 1 It's ridiculous. It's a ridiculous expectation.

Speaker 1 There are benchmarks. That's great.
But what you do instead is you attach it to what they want, what drives them, and then help them see what are the metrics they would need to get there.

Speaker 1 And then you coach on what behaviors will be critical to achieve that metric. And

Speaker 1 what inexperienced managers do is they coach metrics. They tell people they need to raise their clothes rate.
They need to raise their average ticket. They need to increase their revenue.

Speaker 1 They need to get more five-star reviews. That's coaching a metric.

Speaker 1 What you do is you coach a behavior. And I haven't witnessed it firsthand, but I suspect you do it this way.
I suspect you don't tell people what behaviors they need to engage in.

Speaker 1 I suspect you ask them,

Speaker 1 if you wanted to increase your close rate, what are two things that you could do differently during the call that would make it more likely that that customer is going to say yes.

Speaker 1 Or Or if you're looking to increase your average ticket, what are the three most important components

Speaker 1 in the customer experience that would help them choose a

Speaker 1 higher priced item or a more substantial package and still feel great about it, right? So asking guiding questions that help people, not leading questions.

Speaker 1 Guiding questions that help people find their own answers, not leading questions that help them make it seem like it's their answer.

Speaker 1 That's the bullshit that I watch managers talk about getting buy-in and leading questions and all this stuff.

Speaker 1 No, yes, guiding questions that help people arrive at their own path to their own goals that motivate them. And you do that at a glance as well as anyone I've seen.

Speaker 1 And I think that's an enormous reason for your trajectory.

Speaker 1 And that's the part that I want to make sure you're taking time to really think about and make sure that your leaders understand that as well.

Speaker 2 You know, if you really think about it, the first time it was years and years ago that somebody sent me a message and they said, I get to coach my son's soccer team because of this.

Speaker 2 It became so much more than money or goal setting to me. It became life-changing, truly, truly life-changing.
And I became addicted to changing lives. And

Speaker 2 I love when people fix their credit. I love when they bring a kid into this world and they say it's going to be a great life.

Speaker 2 And I love it when someone says, I had the worst relationship with my wife and now we get to spend quality time every night together because I'm no longer a slave to my company.

Speaker 2 And when you really look back and you figure out, all I tell my guys is, listen, don't worry about being number one now. Just better your best.
BYB, better your best. What can we do together to help?

Speaker 2 And I'm addicted to training. I'm addicted to these little things.
We are obsessed with role play. And I got to tell you, the first time I brought up the word role play,

Speaker 2 everybody rolled their eyes and they said, dude, we're not role playing. And now I could go to any corner next door.
I guarantee you, if I walk next door, there's 10 people role playing next door.

Speaker 2 There's two technicians that took the time out of their day to come to the training center and work with them, not because they have to, because they want to. And I just love watching.

Speaker 2 I love this equilibrium. I don't want to be involved.
I love it evolving without me. I love it that I get to meet new people every day when I walk through this office.

Speaker 2 I love that the paint is getting redone right now, not because I asked them to.

Speaker 2 I love it when I see somebody in the parking lot picking something up, not because they have to, not because I told them to, because they want to. And it's something that's just special.

Speaker 1 I want to make sure that we clip the quote. I just love watching role play, Tommy Mellow.
That's the important, important fact. Just as long as we get that quote clipped.

Speaker 1 But so this is an indication, again, of the way that your leadership breeds ownership and responsibility. And I love that.

Speaker 1 And also, you can make it easier on yourself, too, because when we use language that has a negative connotation, we have to overcome that negative connotation and get them to engage in it.

Speaker 1 You know, at Cindy Powski years ago, just said, stop calling it role play and start calling it skill practice or simulation.

Speaker 1 So it's that simple. She said, adult men don't want to engage in role play with you, but they're more than happy to engage in skill practice or simulation, right?

Speaker 1 And sometimes it can be that simple, just paying attention to our language and not creating an uphill battle for something that could just be shifted in what we describe it as and how we label it.

Speaker 1 The other thing that I want to come back to, and in the spirit of the nuance of language,

Speaker 1 just offer a thought for your consideration is this idea of changing lives.

Speaker 1 I would even say just be cautious with that thinking because what that does is it makes you responsible for it.

Speaker 1 But if you are creating an environment in which people get to change their lives,

Speaker 1 that hands the responsibility and the credit back to them. Now, your responsibility is to create the environment, the business, the platform and the model, right? By you yourself as a leader.

Speaker 1 But then...

Speaker 1 You know, we're changing people's lives too. We're creating a platform, an environment, and a place in which people can change their lives and create the lives they want.

Speaker 1 That gives them all the credit and responsibility back.

Speaker 1 And frankly, that's the reality of it, because I've trained at this point, you know, I don't know how many tens and tens of thousands of people along the way. I've never changed anybody's life.

Speaker 1 And I've had a lot of people walk out of the same exact training event telling me it was life-changing and telling me that it was. the worst three days of their life.

Speaker 1 So clearly I'm not the critical factor in that. They are, right? And how they're choosing to absorb the information that makes a difference.

Speaker 1 And what you're doing is you're really building a place in which people can change their lives.

Speaker 2 You know, you and I spoke, I don't know, about two weeks ago, and you said, Listen, I want you to really think long and hard about your mission to be North America's largest and most trusted garage store company.

Speaker 2 You mentioned to me, I would really change that vision to be

Speaker 2 the best place to work

Speaker 2 in North America at a trades business. And it really resonated with me.
I thought a lot about that. And I definitely don't want to just go change it without everybody's impact on that.

Speaker 2 But truly, it is a breeding ground for just, it's just amazing to see.

Speaker 2 And I definitely want, you know, you said some stuff earlier about just writing people up and putting them on a pip and saying, what's wrong with you? What's going on?

Speaker 2 Why aren't you hitting your goals? What's going on, man?

Speaker 2 What's happening? You know, sometimes people are going through some stuff at home, and everybody does. And having a heart to say, I'm here for you.
Let's work on this together.

Speaker 2 I'm your friend in this. And you've always had my back.
And I've got yours.

Speaker 2 Let's just have a candid conversation on what I can do, if there's anything, to be more of a friend to you rather than a boss.

Speaker 2 I always say this: I've had coaches that used to take me to dinner when my mom wasn't home from work.

Speaker 2 And they cared. They genuinely cared.
And I had two a days in football. And we've had two a days for a week straight to play one game.
We practiced 10 times to play one time.

Speaker 2 And that's one thing I always bring up is: listen, have any of you played sports? Have any of you heard of two a days?

Speaker 2 And yet, a lot of times we say, listen, we're going to practice for two weeks and you're never going to practice again for the game. You're going to learn in the garage from now on.

Speaker 2 And so I love calling it practice. We always talk about that.
We just say, listen, let's practice. And I always pick up tips.

Speaker 2 Last week, we had brent buckley who's going to do 12 million on tune-ups this year he's a leader he's out there still doing the work and it's so impressive to me because he came on and we do these 15 minute interviews every week with different people and we play it to the entire technician team and he said all you got to really do is care If you truly care and you think you're offering the best product and you're actively listening, you're going to give great results and you're going to do well.

Speaker 2 And I love when I get to show people, they don't always want to hear it from me. And this is why I love podcasting because now I just say, listen to Keith.

Speaker 2 He said it the best because I don't like it coming from me all the time because it gets stale and it gets like a broken record.

Speaker 1 So I'll share with you a discovery in my coaching that has been profound and continues to inform me because you'll notice it in my conversation that I very often will reference other people who are doing this particular thing well.

Speaker 1 That's one way that I ensure that I'm A, citing the original source or an example of it, which people can attach to, but also that it's not a constant message for me,

Speaker 1 right? Because that's an exhausting form of leadership.

Speaker 1 And the other thing that I found, Tommy, is that the way in which we're able to most effectively share ideas with people is when we share with them what we're learning, not what we already know.

Speaker 1 So I continue to find that people are very enthusiastic to learn alongside my learning. They're much less enthusiastic to learn from my teaching.

Speaker 1 So when I'm sharing with people,

Speaker 1 I made this mistake this week. I had this error this week.
You know, I just came off of a coaching session. I was in a training.
I did an off-site.

Speaker 1 99% of the off-site was outstanding. But there there was a moment where I got contentious with one of the participants.
I kind of lost track of my poise. I got impatient.
I got a bit aggressive.

Speaker 1 I let some natural tendencies of mine out that aren't my best leadership qualities.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 it was pointed out to me.

Speaker 1 And my initial reaction was to want to defend it. And then I said, no, that's not.

Speaker 1 My mantra as a leader is I am kind, patient, and totally committed to seeing these men and women at and holding them to their very best. That wasn't kind and patient.
That was impatient.

Speaker 1 That was me having a reaction that wasn't in the best interest of this person.

Speaker 1 And so I just looked at it, I got, I'm going to apologize for that.

Speaker 1 And I got on the horn with this person. I apologized.
And he ended up telling me that this thing had really upset him.

Speaker 1 And then I shared with some other leaders in the business, by the way, heads up, who had witnessed it, I apologized to this person. And they were like, oh, wow, thank you.

Speaker 1 That was actually on my mind.

Speaker 1 Man,

Speaker 1 being able to share like, hey, this is what I learned this week. This is where I failed this week.
And genuinely, not just for any other reason, but that

Speaker 1 brought people closer to me than anything that I could have taught them

Speaker 1 about how they should be.

Speaker 1 And so it's a really important distinction. So yes, to the podcast and bringing in others.
That's just brilliant from your standpoint to cite other experts.

Speaker 1 But also, as much as you can humble yourself and continue to share with your team members what you learned yesterday, last week, last month, what you continue to struggle with, it invites people into the learning.

Speaker 1 And, you know, to kind of cap this off, John Maxwell would talk about the law of the lid and that teams won't develop past the lid of the leadership. Yep.

Speaker 1 I agree with that, but I don't think that's the whole story. Teams will only continue to develop at the rate at which the leadership develops.

Speaker 1 And so it's this trajectory that creates a gravitational pull that, oh, this is what it looks like to be a leader at this organization. It's not having all the right answers.

Speaker 1 It's asking tough questions and admitting when we're wrong quickly. You know, one of our core values with ethical influence is be wrong early and often.

Speaker 1 And it's about recognizing that it's in our wrongness that we find the quickest path to growth.

Speaker 1 If I wake up today and everything that I thought turns out to be right, then I had exactly the peak of my existence that I can have.

Speaker 1 But if I wake up and discover that there were things I believe that I'm wrong about, I've just opened up a whole new lid of what's possible and what I didn't know that I didn't know.

Speaker 2 That's pretty interesting. I love the way you think about things.

Speaker 2 I've really focused on a huge weakness of mine, which is reflection. And it was so hard before COVID for me to look back.
And when shit hit the fan, I have a bunch of trusted advisors I call.

Speaker 2 One of the things I've learned is to plant ideas.

Speaker 2 I don't mean to do it, but when I reflected, I realized I used to call whoever wasn't like, for example, if somebody really respected you, like Luke, our COO,

Speaker 2 what I would do

Speaker 2 is I'd work with you on an idea and then I'd have you call Luke. Because

Speaker 2 it sounds bad, but that's one of the things I've realized that I've done with a lot of my mentors is if I find somebody really respects them.

Speaker 2 And then it sounds bad, but it's almost like planting an idea and making it their idea because I know they're not going to work hard if I got all these ideas.

Speaker 2 But what I want them to do is to find their own path. But by

Speaker 2 at service time, we brought 15 people with us. You saw the bunch of black shirts out there because

Speaker 2 truly we send our leadership team to different shops all the time, usually HVAC, HVAC and plumbing, because I think they're the leaders in the trades right now.

Speaker 2 And it's amazing what they come back with. And I'll tell you this.
I got a huge disagreement with Luke a month ago. And he said, if you don't want me to do this, I won't.
I'll stop right now.

Speaker 2 And I said, Luke, all I want you to do is make sure that if it doesn't work, you don't stay committed to that idea.

Speaker 2 Because I'm going to let you run with this, but you realized by taking 20 of our top technicians out of the field to do a job-by-job management.

Speaker 2 might not be the best thing today. So I want you to continue to test and just let the numbers guide you because it's scary to me.
It was really scary.

Speaker 2 And I just said, listen, I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'm going to let you lead.
And I grabbed this book. It was sitting on my desk.
It's power questions.

Speaker 2 One of the things that I really try to do is ask a lot of questions, make people think long and hard. Why is this going on? And is this the right idea?

Speaker 2 And give me your mindset on making these decisions. And some of the times I don't think some of them are thought out.
And some of the times they are. I trust my team.

Speaker 2 I will tell you I'm 100% committed to a fault.

Speaker 2 Sometimes I don't know what's going on.

Speaker 2 And I don't mind that. I really don't.
It's something I've had to release the control. And it's not easy for a guy like me to do that.

Speaker 1 All right. So

Speaker 1 very good. Three things to circle back on here that I thought were really interesting.

Speaker 1 So As it relates to the questions that you're asking. Well, first of all, so this was really important in the coaching.

Speaker 1 and again to point this out to the listeners this is a really important distinction

Speaker 1 not i'm going to let you do this but it better work

Speaker 1 but i'm going to support you in doing this as long as you promise that if it isn't working you don't stay stuck on it that is such a critical distinction in what support looks like because

Speaker 1 The former would be more like the, don't come back to me with bullshit budgets, make sure that they're real,

Speaker 1 right? That's the one that's sort of like a latent threat.

Speaker 1 This one was supportive

Speaker 1 leadership and coaching because it said, look, I don't necessarily agree with this, but I want you to go forward with it as long as you promise me that you don't stay stuck to it if it isn't working.

Speaker 1 That's fucking great coaching.

Speaker 1 That's great coaching. That's such an important distinction.
One is support with a fair bit of caution. One is like a latent threat.
So

Speaker 1 incredible distinction that I wanted to make sure I pointed out that I heard in the language. The other thing is this idea of asking great questions.

Speaker 1 What I want to make sure I encourage and even challenge with you is something that I heard in there, which is asking questions to let them think that it's their idea. Be careful about that.

Speaker 1 That's manipulation.

Speaker 2 I was recognizing that. Good.

Speaker 1 That's brilliant.

Speaker 1 And that's okay by the way because we do that so i want to share with you a way that i've discovered that we can still have our ideas still be able to introduce our ideas but not put people through kind of a leading question that is guiding them towards our own answer and it's really been a game changer for me in my coaching and it's a simple way of stacking the phrase so Let's say we have this idea popping up about taking 20 people out of the field and doing this other thing and it gets presented, or we're talking about how we want to solve an issue.

Speaker 1 I'll say to someone, you know, Tommy, I have some thoughts on this, but before I share them, I'd like to hear yours.

Speaker 1 And then I ask the question from a genuine place of curiosity. And here's what happens for me when that takes place.
One,

Speaker 1 I think you and I are probably similar in this way, that we're competitive, especially when it comes to ideas.

Speaker 1 Like we like to share great ideas, maybe be thought leaders, you know, have the answer that astounds people, have a great point that we want to make.

Speaker 1 And although that can be a strength of ours, it can really limit the growth and the thinking of a team that we're responsible for coaching.

Speaker 1 Nevertheless, it's still how I'm wired.

Speaker 1 So when I say, look, I have some thoughts on this, but before I share them, I want to hear yours. It allows my brain.
to pause and not need to get my thing out there.

Speaker 1 I already set a place for the fact that I will get it out there.

Speaker 1 But what I realize is that if I

Speaker 1 share my idea first, I am going to dissuade pretty much any other thinking in the room unless I've got some really courageous people in there that are willing to disagree with me or, you know, who even have the self-awareness to realize that I might have just shifted their way of thinking with the idea that I shared.

Speaker 1 And lastly, what it does is it allows me to genuinely listen to what their ideas are

Speaker 1 and still still hold this like a sacred place where I can return to my ideas after and not smash them, not make them feel like their ideas were worse. And what I've found, Tommy, 50% of the time,

Speaker 1 my initial idea is probably still

Speaker 1 a better idea.

Speaker 1 And 50% of the time,

Speaker 1 the other person's idea is superior.

Speaker 1 And had I not asked it the way I asked it, I might have never heard their idea.

Speaker 1 And so that's a strategy that I've been able to develop for

Speaker 1 being able to not manipulate people, not ask them leading questions to try to get them to my solution, but still be able to make a stake that I have some thoughts on this,

Speaker 1 but also open up a forum where they get to share theirs first so that I'm not leading them in one direction or the other.

Speaker 2 When I went to Jack's breakout session, he said, I've never implanted it. Basically, he said, my team, my one-on-ones, they present to me.
The what went well this, where could I spend more time?

Speaker 2 What did we amplify of our core values? Like he's got that whole guide. And then what I added to his guide, and I got to tell you, I'm horrible at this.
I am not,

Speaker 2 but I love it. But one of the things on the back sheet is I said, okay,

Speaker 2 what are the person's dreams? Who's important to them? Their kids, their dog, you know, Emmy.

Speaker 1 Nice and done, bud.

Speaker 2 And Jack's not missing a whole lot of anything, but I felt like, what are some of the things outside of work? Because those conversations matter. And they're very interesting.

Speaker 2 And it brings some, it's actually something somebody can look forward to. And it forces reflection.

Speaker 2 And I think it's fabulous. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Fabulous. And two things I'd like to say.
One, Jack's missing plenty. Trust me, I worked for him for eight years.
He's missing plenty. And so are you.
And so am I. All right.
And that's okay.

Speaker 1 now the thing i want to point out about the the reflection i love what you're doing i think you are amplifying that one-on-one by having a spreadsheet or some sort of data points about how to check in on this person i mean when i put somebody's name in my phone these days i'll usually put their name plus their spouse's name plus their kids names so that every time they call, I'm reminded of all the people I should be asking about and checking in on because I don't necessarily naturally do that.

Speaker 1 That's about being resourceful. Okay.
And this is what I want to share with you about what I just heard you say. You said a huge weakness of mine is reflection, not reflecting.

Speaker 1 But I want to make sure that you understand that that is

Speaker 1 a limitation of yours that's directly tied to a strength, which is that you're always looking forward.

Speaker 1 I mean, Tommy, I spend 99% of my time reflecting,

Speaker 1 thinking about everything that's happened and just heard and what I just said. And I mean, hell, it's an exhausting place to be.
And I need people like you to get me to look forward.

Speaker 1 But if we suddenly turn you into this great reflector,

Speaker 1 we're going to take away your superpower, which is looking forward all the time.

Speaker 1 So there's a difference between working on a weakness versus being resourceful and self-aware about a weakness or a limitation.

Speaker 1 Because if we start focusing your energy on reflection,

Speaker 1 then we're going to take away your superpower, which is forward thinking. If we help you become aware that sometimes you don't reflect

Speaker 1 and maybe create some very specific ways of reflecting that are actually forward thinking, what's one lesson that you've learned that you want to make sure you don't forget moving forward?

Speaker 1 Something like that, brief amount of time, low energy expenditure that maximizes your ability to quickly learn and apply. That's beautiful.

Speaker 1 Or surrounding yourself with people that you sit there at the end of slamming away at some vision and go, now, what am I missing?

Speaker 1 And you let them live in their superpowers, which is to look back at lessons past or potential impacts that you might not have heard.

Speaker 1 These are ways of becoming resourceful, thoughtful, and self-aware, but without limiting what is your strength. I don't coach people on fixing weaknesses, man.
That's a horrible place to spend time.

Speaker 1 I coach people on maximizing their strengths and mitigating the impact of their limitations on themselves and on others around them.

Speaker 2 That helps a lot. Cause I will tell you that I've never really focused on the weaknesses.
There's a great book on my shelf over there called Off Balance on Purpose.

Speaker 2 And people always say, I want to live this perfectly balanced life. And I want everything.
I want my work-life balance.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, oh,

Speaker 2 okay. What does that mean to you? Because I'll tell you what, if I'm working all the time, I'm not praying 10 times a day and probably not getting all my workouts in.

Speaker 2 If I'm working out three times a day and the perfect diet, but what I've learned is my trainer has to show up to me. That makes me accountable.

Speaker 2 I pay a lot extra for him to come here or work out because I've learned my weaknesses. So I've surrounded.
I know all my weaknesses and I know a way to set up my life.

Speaker 2 Look, there's a lot of weaknesses I still do. But I've really tried to take away the excuses of I can't go to the gym today.

Speaker 2 Or right now I'm working with somebody that's going to be preparing all my meals. So to make it easy, I bought all these color coordinated.
And I'm not this guy. I'm not a C-type.

Speaker 2 This is probably the most C-type thing I've ever done. But I bought all these color-coded Tupperwares.

Speaker 2 And then I just, this is what I'd like in these. And then I'm working with a dietitian to make sure it's getting me to where I want to be.

Speaker 2 Because I've always gone to leadership and the best, the best. When I lost to ping pong, this is a story that's on TikTok.
I hired the number one trainer in Arizona to help me, one guy.

Speaker 2 And that was my GM at the time.

Speaker 2 So I think it's great to be aware and get help. And I've always, I went to rate my professor.

Speaker 2 And I went to five different colleges at the same time because I had a really good organic chemistry teacher. I was pre-dental.
So I went to five because I stacked the deck.

Speaker 2 And I said, this teacher is going to teach me the best to get through my

Speaker 2 and also it's going to be a lot easier to learn and easier to get an A in that class. So, I've always tried to just go straight to the source and get the best of the best.

Speaker 1 This is wonderful. And there's so many lessons.
I, you know, it's funny because when we had our first conversation,

Speaker 1 if you were to say what percentage of the time you were talking and I was talking in our first conversation, what would you guess at? I have my answer, but I'm curious what yours is first.

Speaker 2 You know, I was probably 60, 40. I'm usually 80-20, 20, but

Speaker 1 I would have put it at 80, 20. So

Speaker 1 as I was preparing for this podcast, I was like, I don't even know how this podcast is going to go. If I'm going to be mostly listening or mostly sharing, you know, like I'm not really sure.

Speaker 1 But in that preparation, I had no problem because the stuff that I'm hearing from you is exceptionally evolved.

Speaker 1 It's really, really evolved.

Speaker 1 And, you know, I have a sign behind me right there on the shelf next to the gin that says what our niche is at ethical influence global and it's to unlock a magical level of influence in already exceptional leaders

Speaker 1 and you know this is where i've decided to focus in like because it's like in the course of this call it's not massive shifts it's not these 180s that make but taking someone like you It's amazing watching how fast your neurons fire.

Speaker 1 I mean, and I mean that. Like I said this and then I see you reach for a book that reminds me of this.
I mean, you, you make connections fast.

Speaker 1 And now if we take you and just up that awareness,

Speaker 1 that nuance in language, that distinction and what you're thinking is on this, or exactly how you're expressing this, or what's your intent when you ask that question, man, it's remarkable.

Speaker 1 And now this is how I learn. to influence people in multiples.
Because a leader like you, with how many people are in your organization right now?

Speaker 2 500.

Speaker 1 And how many people are we expecting to listen to this podcast?

Speaker 2 15,000.

Speaker 1 Okay, so that's influence, right? There's going to be people out here that I'll never meet, you'll never meet, that listen to this and they do something different in their business of 500 people.

Speaker 1 And now we're starting to have the potential for thinking that can create an environment that is world altering, right? And so, you know, this is the stuff that I love to dial into.

Speaker 1 And I so appreciate and hope that people keep hearing as you continue, because you'll continue to listen to Tommy's podcast, right? They're here for you and your guests.

Speaker 1 But this is a, you know, a singular appearance with me.

Speaker 1 Keep listening to the way that Tommy is constantly

Speaker 1 seeking

Speaker 1 others and advice and then saying, oh, yeah, I could see that. Oh, that's interesting.
Oh, that's different. Versus trying to return volley with with an example of how he already knew that thing.

Speaker 1 If you listen for that, you're going to see, and Tommy, it seemed to resonate with you when I talked about that idea of being wrong, but you do it very quickly and you do it by acknowledging, oh, that's interesting.

Speaker 1 Oh, I hadn't thought of it that way before. Oh, that's really fascinating.
And not only do you make me feel like I'm bringing value.

Speaker 1 but it immediately demonstrates how quickly you're willing to hear somebody else's opinion and not try to return volley to show how much you know.

Speaker 1 Now, the one caution I would have for you, different than Julian's, somebody who achieves at your level,

Speaker 1 I would make sure, and it sounds like you've got the right anchors for this, but I would make sure that there's also a distinction that you're studying, that you have self-worth in who you are.

Speaker 1 without it needing to be attached to achievement.

Speaker 2 You know, Tom Howard said, you might make me cry, but I'm not going to cry on this episode. But no, it's, it's interesting.
You know, I why not? Wait, why not?

Speaker 1 Why aren't you going to cry on this episode? Why would you say that?

Speaker 2 Well, well, just, it hits home pretty hard, but at the end of the day.

Speaker 1 What about that hit home? What about that hit home?

Speaker 2 Well, I just, if you look at everything, I always talk about legacy. And what is a legacy? When you look back at someone's life, who did they affect? Who did they help?

Speaker 2 Help them help themselves. That's what I'll take from what I've learned today.
Who did I help help themselves? And well, that's what I consider an accomplishment. I do feel like, uh,

Speaker 2 let it rip, Tommy, grab a tissue.

Speaker 2 I do look at people's lives. And, you know, I always said there's only one competitor right now for me, and that's Elon Musk.
But I do have self-worth.

Speaker 2 And I never once thought about that because I don't take the time to reflect. I've never like,

Speaker 2 I don't look back at things. And I'm not like, oh, when we celebrate big wins, it's for an hour.
And then I say, time to move forward.

Speaker 2 And I think almost to a fault, but definitely reflecting and taking some self-worth and just saying,

Speaker 2 I don't know. It's just something I got to really think about.
I don't have any answer.

Speaker 1 So to be clear, the goal is never to make anyone feel or do anything,

Speaker 1 but I do want you to notice how quickly you wanted to get out of that moment of reflection.

Speaker 1 And, you know, whatever discomfort it brings and whatever is there for you, that's where there's something really powerful for you to explore now or in the future.

Speaker 1 And so all I did was just bring you back to what I felt like and saw that you wanted to get out of real fast.

Speaker 1 And, you know, you kind of went into some of your known scripting, as it were, things that you, I always say, which brings you back to what you're comfortable with and got you out of where you were uncomfortable there for a moment.

Speaker 1 Doesn't have to be now, doesn't have to be ever.

Speaker 1 But when I work with extraordinary performers, I've watched the fall when people sell to private equity and suddenly they're not the owner anymore, not making their own decisions anymore in the same way, when people retire, when people step away from careers.

Speaker 1 For myself, Tommy, we talked a lot about Nexstar today. When I left Nexstar, I had no idea how much my identity was wrapped up in Nexstar.
No idea. And I went through astonishing.

Speaker 1 depression as I tried to figure out who the fuck I was

Speaker 1 without that.

Speaker 1 And then realized that I had attached, I created a whole life around achievement and being impressive with no sense of self, self-worth without that achievement.

Speaker 1 So when I hear, I just listen, if there's something there for you, it's there for you and it's yours to explore.

Speaker 2 It's definitely something I'm going to reflect on. And just really think about because I go back to better my best.
I just consider achievement and it's growth. It's personal growth too.

Speaker 2 And it's, oh man, I don't like having conversations like this because to me, I like to get the feelings out of it. That's just who I am.
And it's something I need to focus on.

Speaker 2 When people talk about feelings,

Speaker 2 I'm like, let's move on. And it's something very deeply rooted that I could spend a lot of time on.

Speaker 2 And I probably should.

Speaker 1 Well, the only thing that I would point out there is that it's a feeling that keeps you from wanting to deal with feelings.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So it's not that you operate without feeling. People who are logical and see themselves as logical think that they operate without emotion.
That's not at all true.

Speaker 1 It's that logic creates a sense of comfort, which is a matter of emotion and how they feel. And so they want to be comfortable.
So they stay in the logic.

Speaker 1 Right. And so that's.
particularly if control and comfort are come together for you. We make sense of it and then we move forward.
And so that's, it's great.

Speaker 1 That's great that you recognize that this is not a place that you like to spend time, but it's uncomfortable is what it is. Yeah, of course.

Speaker 2 I mean, I think these conversations, there's a book on my shelf called Tough Conversations.

Speaker 2 It's a tough conversation for me internally.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 And it's a little bit different because I'm not used to having these conversations. But what you do is have these conversations often

Speaker 2 and you're comfortable with them and you know you go into someone's past it's like this sometimes i don't want to go to the doctor more because

Speaker 2 and i think a lot of people do this my stepmom just died because she didn't go to the doctor when she was bleeding and she had really bad cancer she would have gone when she had that it could have been fixed and i think that's exactly what you do is is don't go too far down this road without Because once you, but you told me this last time we talked, once you see it, you can never go back.

Speaker 1 Right. You can never unsee it, which is why I don't do it with people who are unwilling.
Unless they invite the conversation, I don't do it. I won't, because there's a reverence.

Speaker 1 You got to respect people's place and where they're at. The only thing that I would share differently, I'm not comfortable with these conversations, Tommy.
These are not natural for me either.

Speaker 1 And I also don't seek them or necessarily, I certainly don't try to create them. I'm just present to them when they're there.

Speaker 1 And before I came on this call, the only thing I did to prepare for this call was, you know, fundamentally, other than physical preparations, was I repeated my mantra to myself.

Speaker 1 And so before I got on this call, I said, I am an instrument for learning and not the source. I am kind and patient and totally committed to seeing this man and holding this man to his very best.

Speaker 1 This man is brilliant, courageous, and in the perfect place in his life for our paths to cross. He's awesome.
I'm awesome. Today's the day and now now is the time.

Speaker 2 I love that mantra. All right.
Now,

Speaker 1 when you just wanted to move off of that, everything in me wanted to let you move off of that.

Speaker 1 Right. However,

Speaker 1 I had already called myself to show up as seeing you at and holding you to your very best.

Speaker 1 And to hold you to your very best in a conversation we're having about leadership, about learning through leadership.

Speaker 1 How many times a week do you tell people that that that you don't grow in your comfort zone

Speaker 1 yeah absolutely right and so here you are being uncomfortable and wanting to get back to being comfortable and you're the leader who's going to lead with this massive influence i'm going to see you at and hold you to your best it's not because it's comfortable it's because that's the version of me that i summoned to this conversation today

Speaker 2 yeah it's powerful i mean really it really is and um

Speaker 2 If you really look at the first four to five years of your life, I think that's really what you got to get back to is what caused you to turn things off.

Speaker 2 It's pretty impactful now that I think about some of these things, but I learned to turn a lot of things off.

Speaker 2 But it's really important that I don't always keep those off because it's not fair to the people around me.

Speaker 2 But you went deeper, didn't you?

Speaker 1 That's pretty special what you just shared, man. I just want to honor that.
You asked earlier about being inspiring. You know, do leaders need to be inspiring?

Speaker 1 You can't be inspiring unless you're inspired.

Speaker 1 And as far as compassion is concerned, you can't teach compassion unless you're compassionate.

Speaker 1 And you sure as hell can't teach forgiveness unless you're willing to forgive. And you just go in there, it brought tears to my eyes.

Speaker 1 And if you don't recognize how fucking powerful that is or how strong that is, then you've got a misunderstanding of what it looks like to be a strong leader because that level of vulnerability right there is what brings people in.

Speaker 1 And then you turn on your charisma, then you turn on your motivational mindset, then you attach to goals.

Speaker 1 And now people know that you're not just an icon, but you're a human and they want to walk alongside you and they want to be a part of this journey with you and they see what it looks like to have to face their own shit in order to grow to be bigger.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, there's plenty of shit here.

Speaker 2 You know, it's one of those things where

Speaker 2 you really look back at your childhood and you could really

Speaker 2 figure out why you make decisions.

Speaker 2 You could figure out the things that really you avoid and the feelings that are attached to those. It affects a lot of relationships in a very impactful way.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 One more, one more opportunity here.

Speaker 1 I want you to say the same thing you just said,

Speaker 1 only say it as an I statement rather than a you statement.

Speaker 2 So I

Speaker 2 avoid certain discussions and certain feelings.

Speaker 2 And I

Speaker 2 definitely need to be aware of when I'm doing that.

Speaker 1 That feel different?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I always say you because I don't own it when I do that.

Speaker 1 Yep. Amazing.
And I just got chills when you said that. What an incredible recognition.
Because that's exactly a little sneaky game the non-conscious plays to

Speaker 1 seemingly acknowledge something, but actually defer it into a you statement, or sometimes we'll do it as a we statement versus an I statement.

Speaker 1 And when it's an I statement, it forces this complete experience of ownership and it internalizes to something very real for you. And that was fucking amazing.
So thank you.

Speaker 2 Thank you. Listen, this is fantastic.
I don't mean to do this. I did want to bring up one thing on this podcast that I thought was really impactful last time we spoke is,

Speaker 2 you know, you do a lot of work with Service Titan, especially the executives. And we spoke a little bit, Vahe and Ara are heroes to me.
And me too, me too.

Speaker 2 And you said, you constantly see these guys making decisions

Speaker 2 that are always pro for the trades. Because I said to you this exact question: I said, as a bank, as a business,

Speaker 2 and having investors like Service Titan does, there's a fiduciary responsibility to the holders. You're holding their treasure, their money, and a lot of their time.

Speaker 2 And you said you constantly see them making ethical, influential decisions

Speaker 2 towards the trades, always the business that they serve. Always.
And that was very impactful for me. And I just wanted to make sure before this podcast ends.

Speaker 2 Because I think that's so important, because I said, I've been on their investor calls. I've talked to four potential investors and they just said, would you be willing to pay more for this service?

Speaker 2 It was all about, would you pay more? Would you do this? What if they increased your cost per technician by $20? What would you do?

Speaker 2 And you said, every day you see them making very tough decisions that are always towards the business owner.

Speaker 2 And I really thought that that was important that people hear that because those are the type of people they are.

Speaker 1 So there were two decisions I made when I left Nexstar. One, I would only work with companies in which the leadership was willing to engage in this coaching.

Speaker 1 So for example, could you imagine if you hired me to work in your company, but you weren't willing to have conversations like this, but you thought all of those people should.

Speaker 1 Your people really need this, right? So I wouldn't work with companies in which the highest level wasn't working. And I would only work with people who I was aligned in my values with.

Speaker 1 And I got to meet R. N.
Vaje, you know, back at Nexstar, probably in 2014, I think, 2013, something like that, very early in their trajectory.

Speaker 1 And then I would eventually come to work with them in this capacity with the privilege privilege to be executive coach to them and to sit in the room while they make the hardest decisions imaginable.

Speaker 1 And now they've got thousands of Titans as employees. They've got tens of thousands of employees.
And every single time I watch them say things like this, well, I don't care what we could do.

Speaker 1 But we promised them this. And so we're going to go back and we're going to make sure that we stay true to our word.

Speaker 1 Or I hear things like, no, we're going to honor the relationship and what they meant to us in our growth path, regardless of where we are today.

Speaker 1 Or they make decisions and they say, is this what's best for?

Speaker 1 And they do make this call, and this is hugely important. Is this what's best for our vision of becoming the operating system of the trades?

Speaker 1 All of these are the factors, but they never,

Speaker 1 ever make a decision about what they can do if it's not in alignment with what they should do.

Speaker 1 And they never make a decision that's outside their value set.

Speaker 1 And these are, you know, I mean, I'll speak to Aaron Vahe, but that entire executive team, because of course they're bringing in people that are sharing in their values. I just, I wish

Speaker 1 that people could bear witness to the conversations I get to bear witness to.

Speaker 1 Because although they might disagree with something that they see, you know, on the user end of Service Titan, or they might have their issues with the way Service Titan is handling something, if they could see the root decision that was made at the highest level and the values and the vision that were attached to it they'd disagree with it perhaps but they would never question how beautifully the decision was arrived at and you got to remember these are still young founders these are not seasoned career leaders.

Speaker 1 These are young founders who built this software themselves and then have somehow navigated through this extraordinary trajectory and have investors that they need to think about, have all of these new factors, think about the rate that they have to be growing as human beings in order to sustain this type of growth for an entire team, organization, and industry.

Speaker 1 And then lastly, this is exactly what they do in alignment with what Simon Sinek said. They make decisions based on their just cause, becoming the operating system of the trades, and their values.

Speaker 1 which are built around the type of team that they want to have, being obsessed with customer success. That's what Ara always talks about in private meetings, not for the public, in our meetings.

Speaker 1 That's what you hear him talk about. And ensuring that we are changing lives, creating the platform to change lives inside and outside of our organization.
They lead with the just cause.

Speaker 1 They support it within their values to make sure that they're aligned. in their integrity, and then they move forward with those decisions, even when they're tough ones or even when they might mean

Speaker 1 short-term sacrifices to investors, short-term sacrifices to bottom lines and so forth, or tough questions and tough conversations that have to be had with customers to ensure long-term success.

Speaker 1 None of this shit is easy, man. And boy, I marvel at how much they have to balance.
And

Speaker 1 guess who is showing up for coaching sessions every other Friday and taking a hard look at themselves? I'll show you the backside of it so that nobody can zoom in on the details.

Speaker 1 Although these are all the good things, but I've got Ara and Vaje's 360s on my desk with all the anonymous feedback from 15 to 20 different people that these two men sit there and absorb and reflect on and make, have tough internal conversations along with interpersonal conversations to keep growing to be the leaders that support this industry.

Speaker 1 You can question a million things, but what you cannot question is the heart and soul of that organization. I promise that.

Speaker 2 I want to to add one thing that's important to me. I called Ara up and I said, hey, man, you're the reason we are what we are today.

Speaker 2 And it would mean a lot to me if you could show up and just pop into vertical track. He goes, can we do it in a panel? And I said, hell yeah.

Speaker 2 And he flew out just to be there with us. He's got the busiest schedule of anybody.
And he said, hey, I could fly in, but I got to fly out to be in my soccer practice with my son. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And he goes, i could only come in for a couple hours but i want to hang out and a person walked up to aura with four technicians four

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 he said all right i'm having some problems with this aura got on an hour call with him the next day

Speaker 2 now we could have developed our own crm and done a bunch of stuff but i believe in them and i believe that they do care and it's genuine

Speaker 2 they're the best

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, I don't want to overstate it or over politic it. I cannot speak more highly.
I mean, it's that's across the board.

Speaker 1 I work with Brad and Sarah Caspier. I work with Will and Shanna Blanton.
And I work with Ara and Vahe

Speaker 1 and their teams and their orgs, you know, from Radiant to Blanton's to Service Titan. And

Speaker 1 each one of those people and pairs demonstrate the highest character.

Speaker 1 the highest level of compassion, along with being extraordinary visionary leaders who I see it as my job just there to coach and support.

Speaker 1 And that is out of all the things I've accomplished or anything I've accomplished in my life, not to say like there's all these things, anything I've accomplished, I think my finest accomplishment is the people I get to work with outside of the people that I consider my friends.

Speaker 2 Well, you're a hell of a guy. You've done a great job.
And,

Speaker 2 you know, when we talked the other day,

Speaker 2 I'll close up with a few questions here, just that I do on every podcast. But the other day when Bree's like, oh, my gosh, she's like, you need to talk to Keith more.

Speaker 2 She's like, I've never even heard you like that. So it's very powerful what you do.
And I'm a big fan. And I really appreciate the time today.

Speaker 2 As we close out, I ask, if someone wants to reach out to you, what's the best way to get a hold of you, Keith?

Speaker 1 So ethicalinfluenceglobal.com is my website. And there's lots of resources on there along with any contact info.
That's great. You can always reach out to me at K Mercurio at Service Titan.

Speaker 1 That's also available and i mean just in general like you'll find my

Speaker 1 you know just frankly you're going to find my cell phone number on the website so you can reach out to me in whatever medium works best linkedin facebook instagram i'm on all those spots give you a call on a sunday like i did yeah no kidding

Speaker 2 and then is there a few books that are outside of the norm of uh e-myth revisited and rich dad poor dad and influence and some of these other books. Is there three books you really?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm back here. I'm going to pull a page out of Tommy Mellow's playbook.

Speaker 1 And let's see here. One of these is very obvious.
Oh, this is a good one.

Speaker 1 I don't have a copy of it live with me. I have it on Audible, which is Simon Sinek's recent one, The Infinite Game, which I think is a non-negotiable for leaders to read.

Speaker 1 So, Simon Sinek, The Infinite Game. I think it's his best work yet.
Tribal Leadership, Brad Case Beer introduced me to this. This is a critical, critical read and absolutely game changer for me.

Speaker 1 Life-changing book for me is Plato's Republic, specifically the allegory of the cave.

Speaker 1 So you spoke of my style being unorthodox. It may be because it's influenced by authors from hundreds and even thousands of years ago.
And so it's been around.

Speaker 1 It just maybe has been lost a little bit. This one I think most everyone has read, but specifically chapter five, habit five, seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Speaker 1 Just keep rereading that as many times as needed. And then

Speaker 1 Trillion Dollar Coach, The Story of Bill Campbell is just a remarkable, remarkable book. These are books that changed my paradigm in how I coached and how I thought.

Speaker 1 Some ways reinforced some of my real core values, which was a beautiful thing.

Speaker 1 Bill Campbell reminded me that it's okay to tell people I love them all the time as I started getting like a little concerned whether that was okay in this new corporate environment and everything else.

Speaker 1 And I go, you know what? It's up to them whether they embrace or reject that, but I'm going to keep telling people I love them because I do.

Speaker 1 And so there's certain things in here that totally change the way we think. And there's certain things that reaffirm the way we think.
And I think it's important to seek both.

Speaker 2 The last thing I ask is I had a lot of questions on here. I didn't hit one of them, but I think it was very profound direction we took this podcast.

Speaker 2 But we talked about a lot of great things and I've definitely impacted from this.

Speaker 2 If you had to just close us out with a final thought, maybe something we didn't address, maybe just something that everybody needs to hear or just take action on or whatever you think you want to end on, I'll give you the stage to close us out.

Speaker 1 I really appreciate that. And thank you for not following all the questions that you had.
because that's not a conversation, right?

Speaker 1 What you did instead was you had a conversation and you actually listened to what I had to share, and you changed what you were going to say next because you listened to me.

Speaker 1 That's what chapter five is all about.

Speaker 1 And so, you know, my friend and mentor, Jack Needham, taught me in the spirit of listening to listen for the last three words.

Speaker 1 And what that meant to me was to stop formulating my next question, my next thought, my next response

Speaker 1 halfway through somebody's sentence, because although maybe I've learned to not actually interrupt somebody when doing that, mentally, I've stopped my listening and I end up not really hearing what that other person had to say.

Speaker 1 And so I'm continuing in this practice to learn to ensure that people are heard, not that people feel heard.

Speaker 1 And I think that's a really important distinction. We can't control how people feel.

Speaker 1 But we can get really clear about our intent to ensure that they are heard and give them a chance to feel heard. So

Speaker 1 that would be my thank you to you

Speaker 1 for today.

Speaker 1 You made me feel heard. My thank you to your audience that listened to this and hung in here all the way maybe to the end even.

Speaker 1 And for all of you, that's a gift that I would ask you share with the people in your life.

Speaker 2 Well, Keith, you are an amazing man, incredible coach, and just a powerful human being. So once again, I deeply, deeply appreciate this and one of the best yet.

Speaker 2 And I've been doing this now for a long time. So this is fantastic.
I appreciate you.

Speaker 1 Tommy, thank you so much. This was a real honor.
And you're welcome. You're welcome.

Speaker 2 Hey, guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast from the bottom of my heart. It means a lot to me.
And I hope you're getting as much as I am out of this podcast.

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Speaker 2 It really helps us out when you like the podcast and you leave a review. Make it four or five sentences.
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Speaker 2 And we're just, we're telling everybody our secrets, basically. And people say, why do you give your secrets away all the time?

Speaker 2 And I'm like, you know, the hardest part about giving away my secrets is actually trying to get people to do them. So we also create a lot of accountability within this program.
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Speaker 2 It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. It's cheap.
It's a monthly payment.

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I really appreciate it.