The LeaderShifter Show

Chicago-based serial entrepreneur Jeremie Bacon is our guest on this week’s episode. His first startup, Backstop Solutions, was a SaaS platform to help hedge funds manage all of their back office and admin functions in the days when he had to first educate skeptical prospects about the cloud. Jeremie is also a student of human behavior and psychology, and that manifests in a “culture first” strategy for every company he’s started (music to my LeaderShift ears!). He also shares his approaches for leveraging his time and focus, criteria for making great hires, and other nuggets of wisdom any entre- or intrapreneur will find compelling.

TRANSCRIPT

33: Culture First Entrepreneurship with Jeremie Bacon

Shani: Hello Leadershifters. Welcome to another episode of the Leadershift Show with yours truly, Shani Magosky. It is my pleasure today to introduce you to our guest, Jeremie Bacon, Jeremie. Quick hello before I give your bio.

Jeremie: Hi everybody.

Shani: [laughs] Jeremie is joining us from the great state of Illinois and the great city of Chicago. That is where we know each other from. Jeremie and I are former colleagues from Goldman Sachs in the equities division. We worked together, we won’t say how many years ago at this point, but I was in domestic institutional equity sales. Jeremie as a Japanese speaker and all-around renaissance man was in the international equities division, but we all occupied the same space in what was then the Sears Tower. Then Jeremie made a big shift to be a serial entrepreneur. His very first company was called Backstop Solutions, which he founded and ran for about a decade before shifting to some other things.

As I said in the pre-call before this, there’s a bit of a Jeremie family tree of entrepreneurship that I will let him walk us through in just a minute. Not only is Jeremie a former colleague and a friend and a model entrepreneur, but he’s also one of the most ambitious athletes that I know. I don’t even understand how you fit in the training into your busy life, as an entrepreneur and a father and a husband and a civic civil servant and some of the other things that you do. He is an ultramarathon runner and triathlete. I just think that is so cool because that requires a real dedication and level of commitment that is unusual, let’s just say. Welcome to the show Jeremie.

Jeremie: Thank you. It’s super nice to be here. I appreciate it, Shani. We’ll go into that and hopefully sharing a little crazy with you.

Shani: Absolutely. Jeremie and I were instant friends when we worked together at Goldman because neither of us really drank the Kool-Aid. We liked our jobs. We respected the firm Goldman, back then great firm still a great firm. We were doing cool things, working with smart clients, but I would say neither of us really defined ourselves by that and we got the joke that this isn’t all that’s available to us in life. Would you agree with that?

Jeremie: For sure, 100%. I would echo your sentiment on that. I loved working at Goldman. I often joke with people. I was hanging out with a couple of old colleagues from Goldman yesterday from the private wealth management group. We were talking about some of the interesting initiatives that they’ve got going on over there. One of them said, “One of these days you’re just going to have to come back here and work with us.” I was like, “Yes, I don’t think I’m employable at this point,” I don’t believe that would ever work as much as I loved it there. I think there are three kinds of people that work at Goldman. There are the kinds like you and me who say, “We love it. We appreciate it. We’re grateful for the experience and opportunity and the connections and the drive and the support and everything that comes with that amazing organization,” but we don’t want to be there forever. It’s a stepping stone for us in our careers and as we continue to expand our world views. Then there are the people that, “I’m a Goldman knight and I will always be a Goldman knight. I love Goldman Sachs.” You find those kinds of people in every big company. They’re the lifeblood of the organization, they make it home. Those are some of my best friends to this day, are folks that are lifers, not just there but other places across the planet. Then there are the folks that, “Damn it! I’m going to be a partner. I’m going to do whatever it takes to be a partner,” that’s also okay. That’s actually one of the things that’s neat about this Goldman hierarchy and the Goldman modeling.

Shani: Mystique?

Jeremie: Yes, it’s an amazing place to be. When I was at Goldman, I got really, really into like personality type testing and human psychology. I’d sit on the floor all day long and on the phone or in front of clients and it was really fun to think about the underlying motivations that drove the people that I worked with and the people that I served. Actually, not that I want to talk about Goldman forever but it was that foundational understanding of an interest in psychology that has influenced me to this moment in thinking about; how I want to build culture, and how I want to carry culture, and how I want to influence culture in the companies that I’ve started. Had the opportunity to work with in the past.

Shani: Interesting that you bring that up because I’m in Arkansas this week working with one of my regular clients. I do leadership training with them every year with different cohorts of leaders. The last two days we have focused on DISC. Which is obviously one of many different personality behavioral assessments and all of the elements that benefit from being more aware of what your own type is, to be able appreciate what other people are so that you can communicate and influence them differently. Of course how you relate to customers and prospects differently. They nailed me because I said, “What type do you think I am?” They were like, “High D.” I’m like, “I’m pretty much tied with one other?” They’re like, “Oh yes, you’re also a high I.” “Yes.”

Jeremie: Looking at Myers-Briggs you’re an ENTJ, I would assume, and with DISC I’m sure you’re a DI, which is exactly what I am and always have been. There’s a lot of pros and a lot of cons to everything about us as individuals because of our individual styles. To me, it’s essential to understand who you are and who the people you work with really are at the end of the day and how they feel. Here at Imagineer the company I run today, we’ll get into what we do this business and things of that a couple of minutes but we have a book club. Interestingly enough the book that the team is reading right now, I think everyone’s halfway through the book, is Surrounded by Idiots. Which is a book that’s based on DISC and DISA and DISC; it’s the red, yellow, green and blue methodology. Which is exactly like the DISC methodology with different color codes but it’s super interesting. It’s been really fun to watch my teammates yet again, discover this and think about, “Who in this business is a D?”

Shani: Someone just recently sent me a picture of that book that they saw in the airport, who had taken one of my DISC training, and was like, “Look.”

Jeremie: Here it is.

Shani: That so funny. All right, let’s get into this because your career has been interesting. First of all, walk us through, why did you make the shift from Goldman to Backstop? What did you have to do, not only process-wise but mindset wise, to make that leap?

Jeremie: Sure. I will start maybe by taking a half step back from that. Really for me, the first shift was deciding to go work at a place like Goldman. For better and for worse, I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was a little kid. I started my very first company when I was eight. I had two companies at eight and 10 and 15, and all through college, I started a couple of businesses even.

Shani: Okay. What was your eight-year-old company?

Jeremie: I consolidated paper routes [chuckles]. That’s a whole other sidebar sort of side conversation that we could spend an hour talking about. Basically, I figured out that I can make a lot more money as a paper delivery boy if I purchased the rights to deliver large chunks of the neighboring paper routes in my area. I approached other newspaper delivery boys and girls and said, “I’ll give you X dollars for Y percentage of your route and I’ll do the collections, but I get all the tips.” It ended up being a regular business for me.

Shani: Look at you rolling up newspaper routes, like a born private equity guy, ringing out the synergies.

Jeremie: The reason I had to do it was because the Denver Post wouldn’t let me get more than one route as a kid, or heck has anybody at the time, I don’t think you’d buy more than one route, “Well, all right, then I’ll just go get them from everybody else.” I’ve always been an entrepreneur for better and for worse and always knew that I wanted to build businesses. As I got through undergrad and grad school, I would have become very fascinated with the financial markets and with financial services and financial services technology. I knew that coming out of school, I didn’t want to go straight into trying to start a business of my own because I had never done something at scale. I had never built a business that did millions and millions of dollars in revenue and I wanted to go to a place where I could figure out how to maybe do that. That was at the end of the day when I was interviewing with Goldman, the 748,000 interviews that we all go through to get in there.

Shani: Exactly.

Jeremie: The 16 different divisions in the firm, I ended up having a choice between equity research and institutional equity sales. I chose sales because it gave me as you recall, direct access to lots of management teams and lots of analysts versus if I went and became an analyst, I would have had success teams but it would have been in a specific sector or category whatever it might be.

Shani: Right. You decided to go broad rather than narrow and deep?

Jeremie: I did. One of the great parts about that job was it exposed those of us that did it to management teams of very large companies that were going public for the first time or that we’re doing secondary offerings, that we’re finding new and exciting ways to tap the capital markets on one hand. It also got an opportunity to sit face-to-face to some of the world’s smartest men and women who are managing money and making decisions about the value and merits of those business plans and business models.

I was famous in my own mind for being the most annoying analyst that the CEOs and CFOs and COOs had ever had to deal with on the road because we’d finish meetings and we’d sit down in the limo going to the next meeting and I go, “Okay, I got 47 questions based on what you guys–” I would literally just pepper these guys and girls with questions about how they run their business, how they got to where they went, what about sales, what’s going on with this and what’s going on with that.

It was awesome. Then at the same time, I could sit down inside the asset manager’s office and look at what they were doing and how they were growing their business, and what was working what wasn’t. I was sitting inside a bunch of hedge fund offices and a bunch of endowment and pension fund offices where a big part of the business plan and a model for what became Backstop was birthed. This was at a time in the early 2000s when hedge funds were becoming a household name.

Citadel was a tiny fund at the time if you believe. It didn’t even exist I think when I started Backstop or it’s just getting started. Of course, now, hedge funds play a massive role in world finance.

Shani: Right. Ken Griffin’s probably the richest man in Illinois if not a broader spot.

Jeremie: Yes. Several of the Citadel Cubs, if you want to think from that way that he started since are also now billionaires. It’s been an amazing thing to see but there were some obvious problems with the businesses that these folks were running. There were some obvious ways to get involved to build software solutions that would help to fix some of those problems. On top of that, this was the very beginning of the– Well, the dot-com bubble had burst in 99 and early 2000 and this was 2003.

Software as a service ASP and on-demand software was just becoming a buzzword and becoming a thing. I wrote software as a kid and all through college. I was dangerous with software and I really was excited about this notion of on-demand software technologies. We decided, “Hey, let’s build a software company to do on-demand software for this category of the industry.”

I was lucky enough to meet with a hedge fund manager who had a desire to build businesses in a desire to write checks to start things up, who backed me and backed the team and away we went. That led to an amazing journey and a shift in mindset from going from Goldman Sachs were at the time I think we had– I don’t know. I think we just have 20,000 employees let’s say when I left. I don’t know how many there are today, 50 or some thousand tons.

Maybe 60, who knows, huge number. Going from that to me in a closet working on a business plan, hacking away to find a code, trying to figure out what that guy was going to do, trying to find a co-founding technologist to help me out. We were fortunate and that we had the right idea and the right product and the right market time, which are essential ingredients to success and entrepreneurship. In that first 10 years of that businesses’ existence, we mopped up the market to be totally blunt about it.

We became the dominant player in each of the categories we were in because we built great software. We build a great culture. We took care of our customers. Then we got to a point where it was time for me to do something different because I stopped growing to be totally honest. There’s another opportunity for me to shift my focus and shift gears into doing something that I wasn’t getting the chance to do as the CEO and co-founder of a rapidly growing software business.

I got lucky and found a way to go be the president of a once rapidly growing software business that had fallen on harder times and was shrinking. It was publicly traded but was bought by a private equity fund and I had never had a chance to work for PE fund before, to be part of a PE board structure. I fell into this amazing opportunity to go help to do a restructuring play and building a business and helped the best in assets and look at other assets to acquire and what not but part of an even bigger business within the financial services technology markets. It was an exciting first 13 or so years of my entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial journey.

Shani: What did you learn from Goldman and Backstop that you brought with you to that role where were essentially turning around a situation that really worked?

Jeremie: Well, I think one of the biggest takeaways from Goldman outside of this desire to focus on human psychology and building teams and building culture is the notion of culture itself. The importance that culture plays and building this.

Shani: Yes. I wish everybody that ran companies had that mindset because it drives me crazy that people relegate culture to some junior HR person and it’s not elevated to the same level. That’s my tagline is where business strategy and culture meet because they have to meet.

Jeremie: I’m going to say they’re obvious they’re probably not. Some I think pretty clear reasons why that’s the case, why a lot of executives don’t get culture or don’t think cultural, culture first and that’s because a lot of executives are DI’s. Going back to this, a lot of us we’re naturally passionate people with a desire to grow, expand, explore, drive hard, move fast, break things, work really fast, work really hard, work tirelessly, go crazy and change the world, right?

We carry a culture with us but oftentimes to drive culture into a group of people and to make that culture stick. DI’s were terrible at that because we’re always thinking about the next mountain to climb, right? We’re actually thinking about the next mountain to climb before we even got to the top of the mountain we’re currently climbing. I’m going to go that one next.

It’s really hard for us to stop and say how do I ensure that all the great things we learned, getting up this mountain become part of the permanent culture and stay here. I think that’s where again using this that’s where we need our C’s, right? That’s where we’re not analytically minded attention to detail. I’m not going to act until I know exactly what is right and what’s good for me and what’s going to work types because they can help absorb the culture and then spread it through your execs.

I’s can be great spreaders to so whenever you have to think about this holistically and so many people that are hard-charging entrepreneurs or CEOs or execs, they’re too worried about next quarter or the next product or the next launch or the next customer meeting to feel it’s worth their time to focus on culture, but you got to do it.

Shani: Absolutely.

Jeremie: To be totally honest about it, culture is crazy important to me but in all the companies I’ve ever been a part of, including my day job now at Imagineer, I like to think that my teammates see me live our culture every day. I’m also not the kind of CEO or exec that where every communication start and ends with our four values. Here are openness, transparency, integrity, and gratitude. I don’t say those every single day but that’s what we talked about. That’s the culture we live.

Shani: Well, that’s the difference is. It doesn’t matter how many times people say it. If they’re not living, if their behaviors aren’t aligned with the words, the dissonance starts to create cultural toxicity?

Jeremie: Yes, sure. Absolutely. To me, that was a big and powerful thing. The honest truth is and whether it’s a software business or a consulting firm or a widget company, the best product almost never wins. It’s great when you can have the best product and still win, but it’s culture that carries your message and your brand to your client. Then it’s the culture that you carry as a business and your attitude toward the customer journey that drives success for your business and your customer and that’s why it’s essential. It’s absolutely essential.

Shani: Absolutely. I love that. Let me just pause and make sure. Did everybody hear that? It’s not necessarily the best product that wins, right?

Jeremie: Almost never.

Shani: It’s the product that resonates with the right message, with the audience, and with the culture of the brand itself so that employees who are essentially the brand ambassadors are enrolling customers because the person in charge can’t do all that. [laughs]

Jeremie: Right.

Shani: The culture has to cascade so that anyone that a customer prospect is encountering is a brand ambassador and that is built from the culture because if you don’t give a shit, you’re not going to put your best foot forward in any interaction with a customer prospect.

Jeremie: Totally right. At the end of the day, products are always improving and products are never done, ever. In any business, it’s never done. That’s why focusing on having the absolute perfect product before you go to sell it is, its a fool’s errand because you’ll never have the perfect product.

Shani: For sure.

Jeremie: Every customer’s needs and wants and desires form your product are different, so you just can’t win. You can never win with the product. You have to win their culture and you have to win the brand.

Shani: Let me ask you this. Can we go back to Backstop for a second because there’s something that’s lingering for me that I think listeners and watchers will be interested in, you were introducing a software package at the very early days of SaaS. Let’s call it leading/bleeding edge. Part of your sale was actually education, if I may take an educated guess?

Jeremie: That’s exactly right. In fact, the first several times I went to sit down with prospective clients and also with other industry participants, within the world of hedge funds and the markets, you’ve got these entities called prime brokers that live inside of big investment banks like Goldman Sachs. Prime brokers, they work with hedge funds and other and hedge fund-like asset managers to help them do everything from figure out who to trade with and which trading platforms to implement to how to make sure that they can pass an SEC audit when they come through a check on their practices and policies.

I would sit down with groups at prime brokers from Goldman, Morgan Stanley the UBS, everybody else and hedge fund managers, and I would say to them, “Hey, I just left Goldman. I’m building a software company. Our platform is going to touch your most sensitive client data, and it’s going to do it all on the internet.” They would just laugh, they’d say, “You’re a total idiot. There’s no way anyone’s going to do this. No one will ever trust the internet. I was like, “Well, this is exactly why you’re wrong, because what we at that point we were at the peak period just when everyone was unsure of the internet, unsure of the power therein, unsure of where the web was going to go, and within years you would be an idiot not to be building for the web.”

Shani: You and Marc Benioff from Salesforce having the last laugh.

Jeremie: Honestly, he was my inspiration. When he started that company in ’99 and really got things going with Salesforce, there was also a moment, our platform is a CRM as well, and I would be totally lying if I said I never looked at Salesforce playbook and never didn’t idolize the marketing machine that is Salesforce. Actually, that’s not a perfect example of it’s not the best product. In fact, Salesforce has become exactly what it set out to destroy in that it set out to destroy Siebel, SAP and these gigantic behemoth systems that are really hard to use.

The reason it won is because they are a marketing master. That guy and that company is the most brilliant example of how to market a business. That’s probably next to Apple and maybe the best. What’s funny and ironic and to answer it to give you a bit more color, with backs up we started the world’s first SAS company for institutional asset managers to help them with marketing and investor relations and communications, at the time that I co-founded Backstop there was a company called Imagineer Technology Group that was founded by a good friend of mine named Erol Ducey. Today my day job is I’m the CEO of Imagineer Technology Group.

What’s funny and ironic is I’ve come full circle with my day job, regarding the types of markets that I work in and the customers that we serve, but what was really interesting was that when Imagineer was first started it was desktop software, it was a what was called a client-server model, it was like the Siebel model, you buy the software, you buy the hardware, you implement it, you run it in your office.

Shani: You to shut down the system overnight to run it, to install an update, once a quater.

Jeremie: Right. That was in the beginning of the Backstop days, we competed against client tier on the basis that were always available anywhere you are blah blah blah, and there are pros to that and cons to that. Over time, obviously, Errol and teaming Imagineer they were incredibly brilliant people and super smart guys and girls and they said, “We’re going to get there,” and of course they did overtime. The Imagineer platforms which are called client tier and web vision slowly but surely over the 2000s made their way up into the cloud as well as it became clear that the cloud was going to win and that everything would be in the cloud.

It’s funny that things have gone full circle where we ended up putting all the businesses that were client-server focused solutions out of business along the way and Imagineer which way back then was a distant second or third in the race over time because of its strengths and because of its dedication and quite frankly its technology stack became the number two player in the market. As fate would have it, now was it months ago or so I had the opportunity to get back together with Errol and the team at Imagineer and we merged a company that I’d started after doing the post Backstop business to Imagineer, and now we’ve taken a lot of the technologies that we built with the last company, it’s called Synap for what it’s worth and we’ve been able to embed ourselves into and with the Imagineer teams and we’re chugging along, we’ve got bigger markets. It’s fun.

Shani: Tell us about when you started Synap that was one of I believe three companies you started pretty much simultaneously?

Jeremie: Within a week of each other, yes.

Shani: What were they and how the hell did you do that?

Jeremie: [laughter]

There’s a story here. There’s a story.

Shani: I can’t imagine there isn’t.

Jeremie: When I left the day-to-day of Backstop my wife who is not just my soulmate but is my rock and is my anchor and is the one person in my life that keeps me from frying myself out completely, looked at me in the eye and she said, “Make me one promise and that is that you will not start a new company for at least two years.” This is the day I walked out of– My last day at Backstop. I was like, “Okay, cool. I can do that. I can make it a couple of years without starting something else.”

22 months in, my wife was like, “Hey, if you want to get started on something new, I can tell you’re ready for it, you need it, you’re dying, you have my blessing.” I was like, “Great,” and we started three companies within a week of each other. One was called Synap. Another one was called Zoku Vault. A third, actually, although we’ve been building the platform and building the business for the past whatever it is now four years and change, we’re actually announcing the business publicly a couple of days from now, and sadly that the business and the brand is as under embargo for the next couple of days, but it was exciting.

My wife, bless her soul, was like, “Go ahead, start another one,” and we did.

Shani: The idea, the startup that’s under embargo and only share what you’re comfortable sharing, let’s just say a little birdie told me it has nothing to do with finance and hedge funds and Sachs?

Jeremie: It does not. It has nothing at all to do with the financial markets, with financial services, or with– There’s technology associated with it but it’s not a software company. It’s actually in the hospitality and health and wellness space of all things, and it’s pretty fun. I can’t wait to tell about it, it’s really neat.

Actually, I would say that I moved to my current home in my current town here in the suburbs of Chicago to build this business, so I’m really excited about it.

Shani: How do you divide your time and energy in bandwidth between three businesses?

Jeremie: You can’t be all things to all people at the end of the day, right? It was essential that when we started the companies, we were very clear, and I say we, myself my wife and my co-founders that each did different businesses, were all very clear from day one what the priorities would be and where I would focus my time. At the time, I became the chairman and CEO of Synap Software Labs. That’s the company that we ultimately merged into Imagineer. That has had my focus, the basket of my focus since starting that software business back in 2015, and post the merger with Imagineer that is my day job, I like to call it.

My 50 to 70 hour a week job is Imagineer/what we did with Synap. The other platforms, one of them is also a software company, a financial services software company and it needed a CEO because there’s no way I could do it. As it happens, a good friend of mine who’s a former client was super interested in starting a technology company, and we were having tacos one day just catching up on stuff and he’s like, “I want to go start a software company that does this.” I was like, “That’s funny because I have here on my phone, I can show you leg-working demo of that exact thing. Here’s like seven years of research I’ve done and here’s all the ready to go, we’ll write a check and we’ll get some funding in place. Let’s go do it.”

It was serendipitous timing but I would not have been able to start that one had my friend, someone who I trusted and who was ready to be a CEO, step up and say, “I want to go that.” He left his job as the CFO of a hedge fund to go do that.

Shani: The point is you have to know your limitations, know you can’t do it all, and then find people you trust to take the reins, so you have to be able to let go of some stuff in order for everything to work.

Jeremie: Absolutely, you’re 100% right, and that’s the same thing we did with that when we hired a full-time staff to work on parts of the project for us, and I’m obviously very very very heavily involved, but not in the weeds. You can’t be in the weeds at all thing, you got to pick one thing to be in the weeds up at a time.

Shani: Yes, for sure. Speaking of how you fit it all in, do you have any tips? Because I think this is something I feel so many of my listeners and executive coaching clients struggle with is having the discipline to take care of yourself primarily with exercise, and that’s just people who want to get a little cardio in here and there maybe flip some weights and you’re on the other end of the spectrum where you’re training to run 30 to 80 miles in a marathon. What are some best practices for making sure that you do that stuff? What works for you?

Jeremie: I guess I would say with the caveat that what works for me can’t work for everybody just because who I am, right?

Shani: Of course.

Jeremie: There’s a lot to be said about that. Again, I honestly think being a DI is the only thing that enables me to do it because I’m a planner and a crazy driven person. I guess the one word I would use to describe how I make it work is planning. Everything is scheduled.

Literally, every moment of my day is scheduled either in writing or mentally. I even schedule my downtime. Today, I’m going to watch season two, episode one of Mindhunter. That’s my downtime.

Shani: [laughs]

Jeremie: I’m watching it on the train ride home and then for 20 minutes while my kids are doing homework. That’s how I’m going to finish that show. It’s on my list of crap to do today. It is as important to me as the conference call I had after this, because to me it’s one of my release points.

For me, the type of person I am, I’ve always been an athlete. I have always been very active except for one, three year period where I wasn’t. During that one, three year period where I wasn’t, I fell apart. For me, again, the sports angle, the ultra-marathon angle, it’s all part of a bigger plan.

For me, if I’m out there running 20 miles let’s say or biking 75 miles or doing an adventure race for a day, that time that I’m out there is the perfect time to do what’s called temptation bundling. I fill up that time with other activities as well as the running and the thing.

When I’m training, it’s all about, okay, physical reaction, what are my legs doing and what are my muscles telling me and how am I going to get through this and or how am I going to improve my shape, my coordination, whatever it might be.

When you’re doing a 10-hour race, you’re not worried. You’re worrying about form because you will get injured if you don’t. You’ve got a lot of time to think. For me, it’s a way to kill two birds with one stone.

Shani: Interesting.

Jeremie: Really, it is. For me being outside, being in the outdoors, doing endurance, athletics and things it’s pure catharsis.

Shani: Yes. Well, I think you said something really important which is, “It’s as important to me as the conference call or fill in the blank?” I think that’s where a lot of people fall down.

Jeremie: Yes, they have been so selfish with their time.

Shani: I’m less, because essentially what you’re saying when you say I don’t have time to go to the gym or do yoga or whatever it is, I’m not a priority to myself. I’m putting everyone and everything else ahead of my own health and wellness needs.

I think when you start to look at it that way, it doesn’t feel good and that’s certainly not the way ambitious people want to have their own self-image shaping up into. I guess is that shift and belief that it is as important as everything else-

Jeremie: Probably.

Shani: that finally gets people to prioritize it into their calendar and stick to it.

Jeremie: Absolutely. There’s also a way to bundle it with other things you need to do anyway. A case and point or want to do anyway, like the business that we’re announcing later on this week. I started with one of my best friend’s in the whole wide world.

He and I do adventure races and ultramarathons together. We hashed out parts of this business model and parts of this vision while running through the mountains of Moab, Utah and while we were dying in the mountains and while we’re adventure racing or canoeing down the Mississippi River. You can find ways to combine the things you love with the things that you have to do. There’s a lot of things we have. I’ve been very fortunate. I mentioned my wife earlier who is my favorite human being on the planet.

Every day, I’m so grateful that she chose to be with me and that she chooses to stick with me because I can be a tough guy to be with because I’m pretty driven to do stuff that can be pretty challenging sometimes. I’ve also got four amazing kids who are just remarkable people despite my inadequacies and ridiculousness.

I’ve got a sophomore oncologist, sophomore in high school, a freshman in high school and a third-grader. You can find ways. I try to find ways to engage with them in activities that selfishly I enjoy and I know they enjoy too whether it’s music or playing a card game or playing a video game with them, whatever it is. You can find ways. You have to find ways to plug in multiple likes, multiple desires and fit them into situations. Otherwise, you can’t balance it all.

Shani: Right, absolutely. Well, Leadershifters, if you are one of those folks who struggles to prioritize the activities whether it’s working out or time with the kids or whatever it is, I think that’s the question to walk away from this podcast episode asking yourself is, “What are some ways that I can combine the things that I enjoy, the things I’m passionate about with the things that I’m doing anyway?”

That makes it easier when you’re killing two birds with one stone as Jeremie said. Wow. I feel I have a million more questions for you. I think I’m just going to ask you one more and then wrap it up because otherwise we might have the longest podcast episode ever.

Jeremie: Fine.

Shani: [laughs] This so key. What do you look for when you’re hiring someone, because a lot of people have what looks good on paper? What special source do you look for in someone so that you know that they’re going to honor, respect the culture? Are there any particular questions you use to assess that?

Jeremie: Sure. It varies a little bit by job function for sure. One or two universal things I’m always looking for on teammates number one is, ability to focus. I think ability to focus is different from focused. We don’t have time to go into the reasons for that. Ability to focus is super high on my list of wants in any candidate for any role.

Compassion and empathy also on top of the list for me. Open-mindedness and transparency. It’s just a natural disposition to have a broad and open and accepting worldview. It’s essential to me. I guess the other two things I look for in every candidate one is a sense of gratitude.

We could unpack that a thousand different ways but I’ll just leave it as a single word, gratitude because there’s a million things that go there. In general, I love being around people who are grateful for what they have. The last thing is service orientation.

The desire to help other people and serve other people. Not to be subservient to people but to serve others and to help other people get what it is they need or want or like and want to achieve and want to be. I think that when you combine those qualities, an experience doesn’t really matter.

Educational pedigree except in certain situations and for certain types of jobs, it doesn’t really matter. If you give me someone who’s a go-getter and a hustler and who is empathetic, compassionate and shows gratitude and the desire to serve, that’s a guy or a girl I want to work with for sure.

Shani: Absolutely, good. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. I’m just going to do a quick wrap-up and tick through some of the highlights that I just jotted down as we were talking with entrepreneur since he was eight years old with consolidating paper routes [laughs] to– I’m listing one, two, three, four.

You’re on your fifth startup I think if I count it right?

Jeremie: There’s a couple of others. Yes, that’s good enough.

Shani: Okay. You’re going to have a baker’s dozen soon. I think one of the important lessons about going to work at Goldman even though you knew you were met for entrepreneurship is to be a little patient and get the experience and the learning you need. It doesn’t have to happen now.

The fact that you have the foresight to do that demonstrates ready, aim, fire. A lot of entrepreneurs are just like, “I have a great idea. I’m going to go.”

I get it. Sometimes, timing is of the essence. If you don’t do it, someone else is going to steal your idea. I think just balance that against– You need some experience because you might have a great idea but you might be completely inept at building and running a company. I love that you did that. I think that’s a really great lesson for Leadershifters. Of course, the fact that culture comes first is always music to my ears. The great lesson and the best leaders are students of human behavior, psychology, psychometrics because we are all a little bit different.

There’s a lot to be learned from that. To me, the best teams have a variety of people, the whole spectrum because when we talk about hiring people that are a good fit what that usually means is I’m going to hire people just like me or just like us. Then you end up getting a whole bunch of people who think the same way as opposed to, “Let’s hire people who come from all different perspectives and that’s what is going to give us the richness to succeed and differentiate ourselves.” Let’s see, I love the part about recognizing that we can’t do it all, there’s only so much time in the day no matter how many zeros we have in the bank account, we can’t manufacture more or buy more time in the day.

It’s like okay know what your limitations are, find people you trust to help you and let them go, trust them enough to let go of the reins and let them do their thing and then you creating bigger pie because otherwise if you try to split your efforts on too many things everything’s mediocre. I would say the last couple things in terms of, prioritize yourself and whether it is about your health and wellness, in your workouts or something else that you’re not making the time to do. Maybe you’re not making the time to read books for pleasure, maybe you not taking the time to take your dog on a long walk, whatever it is. Make it as important as the investor meeting, make it as important as meeting deadlines for clients. It’s got to be that important or else you’ll never do it. Then I love your list of things that you look for in candidates. I’m just going to read them back off because folks whether you’re an entrepreneur or a leader in a big organization hiring the right people, that’s what makes a tick. Ability to focus, compassion and empathy, open-mindedness, transparent, gratitude and service-oriented. All right, my gratitude Jeremie, for having you on the leadership show today. It was a pleasure to catch up with you and give you an opportunity to tell your super interesting story to the audience of Leadershifters.

Jeremie: Well, thanks very much again for having me on the show Shani I appreciate it.

Shani: My pleasure. People are interested in any of your products or have follow-up questions, what’s the best way to get in touch with you or just learn more about you?

Jeremie: Yes, sure. I think the very best way to get in touch with me is through LinkedIn. You can also find me at jeremiebacon.com and get in touch with me that way too. It will all take you to the same place, you would probably find your way to LinkedIn.

Shani: It’s Jeremie not with a Y but an I, E everyone.

Jeremie: Right. J-E-R-E-M-I-E-B–A-C-O-N.

Shani: Bacon like the yummy pork?

Jeremie: Like the delicious food product.

Shani: [laughs] All right, Leadershifters you know how to reach me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and et cetera. Until next time, thanks for watching, listening. Mwah

Jeremie: Thanks so much.

The post 33: Culture First Entrepreneurship with Jeremie Bacon appeared first on The LeaderShift Project.

“Sitting is the new smoking,” doctors are saying these days because the sedentariness of being in front of our computers and devices all day can lead to all sorts of chronic pain and disease. I’m the quintessential example of a desk jockey who has suffered from neck and low back pain for many years now. Join me on today’s episode as I share a fast and easy way to take care of all three parts of your spine plus your shoulders on a daily basis. These brief movements came from a yoga class I took yesterday with Chris Fox at Radiantly Alive studio in Bali, where I am currently on vacation. I challenge all LeaderShifters to take care of your spines – you’ll feel better and be more productive!

TRANSCRIPT

32: Shifting the Health of Your Spine (with Shani from Bali!)

Shani: Leadershifters today, I am asking you to step away from your desk, step away from those computer screens, because they are literally killing us. You may have all heard the new saying that, “Sitting is the new smoking”. Well, it really is. It causes a variety of problems ranging from chronic pain to encouraging heart disease, diabetes, cancer, et cetera. Today’s episode of the leadershift show is going to focus on helping our fellow desk jockeys take better care of our spines. I’m sure that many of you know what I’m talking about, right? The pain that we get from doing this on our smartphones, the pain we get in our neck and shoulders from hunching over our computers. It has to stop, because trust me, it only gets worse.

Okay, as you may be able to tell from the beautiful surroundings, I am doing this episode from the tropical paradise of Ubud on the island of Bali, in Indonesia, where I’m vacationing this week after doing some work in India last week, I’m having the most amazing time here relaxing. Something that I did yesterday that I’m so excited about was, I attended this amazing yoga class at a studio called Radiantly Alive. A fantastic instructor named Chris Fox, his class was really unlike anything I’d ever taken before, which always excites me, because it’s nice to go into a class and know all the poses and get into down dog and up dog and warrior one and warrior two and whatever, it’s also nice to learn some new things.

A bunch of the things that he taught us yesterday, I think are going to be transformational for me, I want to pass them along to you, because they’re things that we can all do every day by stepping away from our desks for just a few minutes. Motion is lotion, especially when it comes to our joints and especially our spines, which is where so much of our life force comes from, it moves up and through our bodies through our spines. Many of you can probably relate to my current state, which is I have massive chronic neck pain, despite having had neck surgery a few years ago, I’ve got horrible sciatica and low back pain. While some of that I would attribute to [chuckles] some of the activities that I’ve been doing over the years that have caused injury to my body, whether it’s gymnastics or cheerleading, or rock climbing or mountain biking or skiing or whatever, a lot of it is attributable to sitting at a freaking desk all day, okay.

Today I’m going to pass along some of the wisdom that Chris taught us yesterday in class regarding taking care of our spine. All right, you have to bear with me, I am tethered to a microphone, otherwise the audio won’t get picked up. I’m going to back up just a little bit so you can see me. The exercises I’m going to teach you, you can do standing up or you can do kneeling as I am, it doesn’t really matter. We’re going to focus on all three levels of the spine, and just start off with, we’re going to do the lumbar spine. All right back up just a little more, okay. Lumbar spine, which is the low back, all right.

To do this, I’m going to do my best to describe this, so those of you who are listening to audio only can also follow along, obviously for those of you who are also watching, you can mimic what I do. Firstly, take your hands with your thumbs to your low back and your fingers to the front of your hips. I would say your first couple of fingers should be in line with your hip bones, I guess these are your hip bones. I know I’m a registered yoga teacher, I should know. Literally, we’re just going to tilt the pelvis back, forward and back, forward and back. You can use your thumb and your fingers to help you through the motion, all right. Literally, moving the pelvis back and forth like this, keep the tummy engaged, right, the core is super important.

Back and forth like this for maybe 30 seconds or a minute, all right. Then we’re going to move on to our thoracic spine, which is the part of the spine that’s between right and thoracic because that’s where our lungs sit in front of our thoracic spine. For this one, we just want to open up our chests. Let me pause right now and say, “This is not sexual.” Okay? If you started to laugh like a 12 year old boy when I was tipping this spine forward and backward, or when I talk about opening up our chest, quit it, right, grow the fuck up. [chuckles] Because this is about taking care of our spines, this is not sexual in any way. Okay, now that I’ve gotten that out in the open, when we open up of our chest, in opening up that heart area, we’re going to extend our arms out to the side, we’re going to inhale as we open up like this, spreading our arms backwards, then exhale as we bring the arms forward, curve the shoulders forward into that heart and chest area, okay, and we’ll do this for about 30 seconds.

Inhale, exhale, open up the arms behind you, opening up that area where the chest, the heart and lungs are, then closing it as you move the arms forward and in front of you. That’s where the thoracic spine which is super hard to get, so this is awesome. Lastly, for the cervical spine, which has been the bane of my existence for years now, this one we’re also going to use our arms. Arms down by the side, we’re going to lift the arms up, move the head backwards on the inhale, then drop the arms in front of you into your side as you roll your neck down towards your chest. Let me just pause for one second, I should have said this before, the inhales and exhales are important, not because I’m trying to be a good yoga teacher, but really you get more benefit if you inhale as you’re opening anything, right.

As we’re opening the heart, or opening the cervical spine, then we’re going to always exhale on the contraction as we move in. For the cervical spine, we’re going to inhale as we move the arms, tilt the neck back. You can even support your neck, if your neck is bad like mine, right, but you’re opening up, can we see this? Yes, you’re opening up here, then we’re going to close, roll the cervical vertebrae down, basically, your chin towards your chest, this feel so good. Okay, do this a few times, how good does that feel? All right, if you do each one for 30 seconds or a minute and a half to three minutes, if you do that twice a day or so, three to six minutes, I think you can spare that, right. Now related to the health of our spine, especially for us desk jockeys is the shoulders.

Now I’m going to share with you one other really cool thing that Chris showed us yesterday, which I loved. If you’ve ever seen people do this thing where they rotate their arm and their shoulder, holding a teacup, always keep the teacup upwards, so it’s never spilling, that’s what we’re going to do. Yesterday we did it with a yoga block, probably can’t do that in the office. Here’s what I want you to do in your office. Take that goddamn phone, let’s put it to some better use, okay. Put it in your right palm to start off with, extend it out to the front. Arm extended to the front, palm up, phone in palm, we’re going to move it out to the right side, then bend your arm almost like Egyptian style, then curve it around over your head. See here, phone, teacup still facing up, then we’re going to rotate out this way, phone is still up, then curl it around, through and back out.

Let’s try that one more time. Arm is extended, palm up, out to the side, into an Egyptian up and over the head, out in front where we’re rotating the other direction, around and through, and back to the front. Guess what, reverse it, if you don’t get this right, it’s no big deal, as long as you’re moving your shoulders in a variety of different ways that’s what’s important. Reversing it’s going to look like this, arm out in front, pull your elbow into your chest, and then extend it to the side to get that curl and then arm out front, and then up above the head, back to the Egyptian arm, out to the side and forward. One more time, elbow back to your center, and then out to rotate through and out and then up over the head, Egyptian arm out to the side, back to the front. Now let’s switch arms do it with the left arm and shoulder. Phone in the right, sorry in the left hand and you can see I’m even shaking a little bit here because my left shoulder is so weak because I have all these neck problems cervical spine problem on my left side.

This left side is going to be much harder for me. Arm out front, to the side, kind of Egyptian arms, up over the head, around and I got to hold on to the phone or it’s going to spill. Out in front, and then around and through. Out to the side, Egyptian arm, up above the head, rotate to the front and around and through and to reverse it around and throughout to the front, over the head, Egypt arm, arm out straight, back to the front.

Now if that just seems too ridiculous for you, no problem I’ve got another way to do this, and this is something I’ve been doing for my shoulders for years with a plain old face towel or a dishtowel. Literally I’ll do this while I’m standing in the kitchen in the morning, waiting for my Nespresso to brew. You literally, just hold the longest to one side each of the towel, and then grip it and start upfront and tip it to the side, and then go back and around. We’re just going front, back and around. Now we can reverse front, back and around, front, back and around, front back and around. If your shoulders are really open don’t try this if your shoulders aren’t open because you could hurt yourself. If your shoulders are super open, you can even put the towel above your head and bring it backwards to stretch up the front of the shoulders like that.

Okay, now it’s your turn. Hopefully, you were following along with me as I did that, but if you didn’t, why not try that? Like as soon as this podcast is over, do these exercises. Let me review really quickly. You’re going to do the lumbar spine pelvic tilt, you are going to do the heart open and close, you’re going to do the cervical spine neck back, neck forward as you roll it down to the chest, and then the shoulder rotations, either with your phone trying to not drop it like a teacup, or with a towel, or even this, just rotate the shoulders, front and backwards. All right now I know what you’re thinking, Shani you’re crazy, I’m not going to do this at the office, I’m going to look like a lunatic. Well here is the thing, I challenge you to do it and then have people ask you what you’re doing, and then you say I’m taking care of my spine because sitting is the new smoking and sitting causes cancer or however you want to say it.

You are doing yourself a great service by taking three to six minutes a day, to take care of your spine and your shoulders and I bet you, other people will be enrolled in it. What would it be like, I am now having this grand vision of people all over the world taking breaks two, maybe three times a day all together in the office and let’s say an alarm goes off like maybe at ten, noon and two or something to break it up during the workday and everybody gets up and does three, four, five minutes of motion is lotion to keep that spine healthy and I will bet you that you will feel better, you will be more productive because by the way we should be taking periodic breaks throughout the day anyway, and productivity and energy management is another podcast topic but trust me, you have to and this would be a great way to do it and actually get some energy flowing through your body because you’re moving it.

Okay, so take this breaks throughout the day and so you’ll feel better, you will be more productive, which means that the company, the organization will benefit and healthcare cost could go down. Don’t be like me, I wish someone had taught me this years ago about the importance of taking care of my spine in particular because currently for the past like 15 years, if I actually had to add up the amount of money I spent on orthopedists and acupuncturist, and massage therapists and physical therapists and energy healers and you name it, I have tried everything to heal my pain, well the body does have what it needs to heal itself, but you’ve got to be an active participant in that. After learning, I mean I knew these things, I just never thought to put them together into a daily routine.

After Chris taught these things to the class yesterday, I’m committed to doing them at least twice a day, no matter where I am, I could be at an airport waiting for a flight or at a grocery store, I don’t care. It’s more important for me to take care of my spine and get rid of this chronic pain than anything. Let’s see, was there anything else that I wanted to tell you before I sign off today? I have a little bit of Bali brain [laughs] so, yeah, I mean really the main message today is take care of the spine, motion is lotion, get up and do it, take care of the lumbar spine, the thoracic spine, the cervical spine and the shoulders and rotator cuff, you will thank me and then you will thank yourself as you commit to this new routine. Because if you don’t do it now, trust me you will experience weeks, months, years of pain and trying to remediate that pain going forward.

Thank you for joining me and I will see you next time.

The post 32: Shifting the Health of Your Spine (with Shani from Bali!) appeared first on The LeaderShift Project.

Today’s guest, Greg Brenner, is the AVP of Talent and Organization Development at my beloved alma mater, The University of Miami. Known worldwide as “The U,” it consists of an elite university with competitive academics and athletics as well as an extensive health care system that all leverage that branding, and Greg’s team is responsible for weaving into all professional and leadership development efforts. Since culture and branding are inseparable, there is a lot for any leader to learn from our conversation. Greg recently hung up his cleats (literally) as a football referee and began his newest identity as “The HR Dad” on LinkedIn. The authentic personal stories he shares and messaging about the human aspects of leadership have garnered him many loyal followers already, so join us to learn more.

TRANSCRIPT

Episode 31: Are “U” Merging Your Culture and Brand? with Greg Brenner

Shani: Hello, Leadershifters. Welcome back to The LeaderShift Show. I am thrilled today to introduce you to my guest, Greg Brenner.

Greg: Hello.

Shani: Greg, hello.

Greg: Hello.

Shani: You guys, Greg is an Assistant Vice President for Talent and Organizational Development at the University of Miami. Those of you who have been following me for a while or even for five minutes, know that I am a huge fan of the University of Miami also known as the U. In addition to being a proud alumna, the University of Miami is one of my clients. I teach some various leadership topics and do some executive coaching. Greg is one of my main contacts at the University of Miami. That’s not all he does. He is also becoming a pretty well-known LinkedIn personality with his moniker, the HR dad. We will talk about that. He’s also an actual dad, not just-

Greg: I am one. I don’t play one on TV, yes.

Shani: Right. [laughs] I don’t know whether he’s a father figure per se to his staff but he is well-loved by his staff and that I do not– It’s not a claim I make by guessing. That is something I have experienced firsthand in working with Greg and his team. We’re going to talk to Greg about his experiences and the shifts that he’s made in his career and the shifts that he’s seen at the University of Miami and whatever else we feel like talking about.

Greg: Awesome.

Shani: Welcome to the show Greg.

Greg: Thank you so much Shani and thank you for having me. I think you’re doing a wonderful work. I know you obviously from the work that you do with us. The work that you’re doing with the Leader-Shift and in this work that is really changing our mindset within corporate America and in our case higher ed and healthcare. I think it’s a very deserving work. I’m glad you’re doing it.

Shani: Thank you. Well, let’s start off with by just tailing on something you just said which is higher education and healthcare. I bet not everybody listening or watching knows that the University of Miami is a bit of a holding company if you will for both the academic institution, the university which has undergrad as well as graduate programs, medical school, law school, et cetera and an entire enormous healthcare system that is pervasive not just in South Florida but we have outposts in various places around the world in the form of UHealth. Talk to us about how, from an OD and Talent and Leadership Development standpoint you see them as different yet with some similar themes that enable you to effectively run programs.

Greg: Absolutely. There’s this big umbrella and it falls under higher education. We’re really, depending on who you talk to you, we’re in the higher education business. We’re also in the healthcare business. Very, very distinctly different businesses. Some would challenge me that higher education is not business or imparting knowledge and things in that nature if you talk about this.

Shani: It is absolutely a business make [laughs]. People should make no mistake.

Greg: It’s a big business. They’re both very much mission driven businesses. However, how you get the work done is different. Our stakeholders are different. However, any time you throw people into the mix of anything there’s always going to be work around that side. That’s very similar, how you go about doing the work, how you strategize, how you do different things may look different because they have different outcomes and different types of things they’re trying to achieve. The issue, then the strategies and what you’re trying to accomplish are eerily similar even being in very distinct different industries.

Shani: Yes. I think that it’s a great lesson for people who are in corporate environments. That this is a business too. You may be managing very disparate businesses under the umbrella of one organization. I think the U does something very well which I want you to comment on in a second, which is using its brand. We do this and this has become ubiquitous brand. I travel all over the world and everyone you see, you’ll never know.

In any random airport, I might see someone with a ball cap or t-shirt that’s the University of Miami. We do this and it’s well known. They’ve taken that brand and embedded it as part of the culture of the organization and on both sides. Talk to us about the process that the university underwent to really capitalize on the brand in terms of shifting the culture.

Greg: I think the brand that you came out of certainly within a lot of respects, the football program and the U and some players having called us that. Really, it has taken a life of its own. You’re right. You don’t go many places where you don’t see somebody with some logo that throws up the U and says, “Hey.” It happened the other day. I was with my son at a National AAU Basketball Tournament. He’s a teenager, 16 years old. I had a U on. I saw this bright orange vest coming my way from another parent going to a track and field event at Disney. All of a sudden from the corner of my eye, our eyes caught. We both had our hands full but he managed to get his hands out and just do one of these things. I was like, “Hi.” It is so such a strong brand. One of the things that we’ve done as an organization and our leaders have done a great job with this is that you could have a brand but that also can be hollow at times. We have the brand but the organization doesn’t always catch up. In this case, I think we’ve always had a very strong organization, strong leaders and strong people that work here whether it’s from a physician on the medical side to a faculty member to administration to frontline employees that fix things.

We have all those type of positions. One of the things that our journey has been around has been how do you make sure the brand stays strong. You do that by having strong organizational values. We were part of some work several years ago to bring values to the University of Miami. Those are values. We have leadership behaviors. We also have some service standards. Those help drive not only our development that we do within our own group that you’re very familiar with but also when you come to the University you come to the health system. You’re dipped in what it is to be a Miami Hurricane whether it’s on the academic side or the leadership side. Intertwining those things, there’s a lot of pride in the U, a lot of pride.

We have to match that as an organization for the people that work with us so that our stakeholders here, our community, our students, our patients, each other feel the same pride.

Shani: I love the phrasing you used that people are dipped in the culture which takes drinking the Kool-Aid to a whole another level to say, “No, we’re not just going to give you a drink of the cool aid. We are going to dip you in the cool [laughs].” Kood-aid not with a negative connotation. It’s a very welcoming warm thing. In fact, why don’t you tell us about– You were responsible for leading the effort to redevelop new employee orientation on boarding. It’s a program called I am the U. If you would tell us about how you developed that. What were some specific things that you and the team did to make sure people felt dipped? [laughs]

Greg: One of the things that we were able to do is through that process of that the transformation that we went through. Culturally, as an organization, one of the outputs was to recreate or even have an orientation that is something that you wanted to have, that was encouraging, that was to let the person know that they made a great decision to come work for us. There was a work group that was put together, helped us design it. We were tasked to, “Right here’s a blank sheet of paper. Go ahead and design it and make sure it happens.” Very fortunate to have. Again, as you know, a wonderful, wonderful tribe that supports this work. They are really the backbone of making that come to the realization. It’s on your first day of work. It really truly is a welcome. It’s not your stereotypical HR. “Here’s what’s going to happen when you get fired.” That type of things.

Shani: [chuckles] I agree. “Here’s a long speech about benefits, most of which don’t pertain to you.” [chuckles]

Greg: Yes, right. I think so. We try to make sure it’s about our values, it’s about what we believe in, it’s about our strategic focus, it’s about how we’re structured, but it’s really about the title is “I am the U” so, how a new person is embraced and really loved by “The U”. It starts the relationship with somebody off on the right foot. It doesn’t mean we’re perfect because we’re not. I haven’t found a perfect organization even in the top best employers in the world. There’s always stuff that goes on, but it starts day one off on the right foot.

Shani: Yes. One of the things that I love is every single person who starts at the U goes through this. It doesn’t matter if it’s a super junior level job all the way up to a new provost. Everybody goes through, “I am the U” on their first day, no exception.

Greg: Yes, it’s great because– It’s the ultimate equalizer. You could literally be sitting next to a senior vice president, and this is not to put down it, you could be a plumber or an electrician sitting next to maybe the number one or number two person in the institution organization and they’re having conversations, they’re talking about their journey and how they got here. It’s so powerful. It’s great in that perspective.

Shani: Yes, absolutely. Something else I wanted to get your perspective on. Education and healthcare are both industries that are under increasingly competitive pressures and regulatory pressures, therefore bottom line is always being watched.

Greg: Right.

Shani: In a cost conscious environment, which I know a lot of my listeners and watchers are operating in, what are some things that you recommend for talent management leadership development that don’t have to break the bank, that people can introduce into their organizations?

Greg: I think always the first thing is you have to meet your organization where you’re at. A lot of times people take that as a, “Yes, that’s common sense”, but a lot of times you want to get so far ahead and so far beyond where you’re at that you can’t get people to shift their mindset. I think one of the things that you do is, in some of our work, we’re fortunate we have a small organizational development team and we’re able to go out and help people with strategies and figure out what are some of those problem areas and things that nature. Also at the same time, the organization has made it a priority to have operational efficiency in what we call administrative excellence which ends up being, “Are you operating at the best way? Are you not necessarily being cheap on something, but are you being conscious of what we’re spending the money on? If we need to spend it on X, are we doing that?” We do the same thing from our development perspective. Years ago we used to have a catalog of say, I don’t know, it was over 200 different courses that we would offer 270 times a year. It literally close to pushing 300 days of development. When I took over I was like, “Let’s stop that and let’s see if anybody notices.” Nobody noticed that we stopped it.

We had all this training except for there was one person in purchasing who always asked me, “What about that seminar stuff that we used to be able to go to?” There’s always that one person. We had to really shift our mindset to say, “All right, let’s be really, really smart on what we’re spending our dollars on.” We wanted to invest heavily within our leaders first. We wanted to make sure that we had something for our staff. That’s where we brought in some of our online development. Now we’re just in a process of building out a strong system to develop our leaders, not only from the senior levels but to the frontline, then now we’re reintroducing some pieces back into, for the staff, whether it’s for career mobility and things of that nature. It’s really being smart with the dollars that you have and investing heavily where you can where you’re going to have the biggest impact.

Shani: Yes, I love that. Leadership is where you can have the biggest impact because then it cascades down. It’s so important. I still see that not enough organizations are investing in leadership development at any of the levels. They’re not-

Greg: Yes. Sometimes where that’s driven is sometimes is that an ego. Sometimes it’s out of a, “Well, we know that.” There’s that, that’s a one saying, “What happens if we develop all these people and they leave.” The old comeback to that is what happens if you don’t develop all these people and they stay? What do you do with that when you have all these people that are just starving for knowledge? Let’s face it, whatever business your listeners are in, business is complicated now. There is more pressure to do more with less to really figure out in the speed of things. Sometimes things are slower than others, but a leader has to really learn how to adapt and change. At the same you’re managing these people. That skill set is so important to develop. You have to focus in on. In fact, one of the things that I’ve been on a mission on lately is not to call the soft skills “soft skills” anymore. I call those “hard skills.” The business skills are those that they teach you in your MBA, how to manage inventory and how to manage balance sheets and all that type of stuff. Those are business skills.

Hard skills are what everybody always talks about is that difficulty of getting a group of people to do what you needed them to do, at the same time having them feel part of something big. You have to invest in that. If not, you’re just taking something for granted, which you would never do on supply chain. You’d never do that on accounting perspective. When you really do think from a people perspective and the expense that it takes to have people employed and you don’t invest in them, to me that’s a poor business decision.

Shani: I couldn’t agree with you more. I have the same rally cry. It drives me nuts when people call these soft skills because they’re anything but soft. In fact, they’re hard for some people to develop which is all the more reason that attention needs to be paid and practice needs to be devoted to it. When we do develop our people and empower our leaders, then it results in hard dollar bills.

Greg: Yes, absolutely. You can see that translate into that very easily if you look for it.

Shani: Yes. I wanted to ask you also on the subject of shifting. You spent the early part of your career in the hospitality and restaurant space. How did you get hired at the University of Miami and how was that shift for you?

Greg: I lost all of my hair in the hospitality business, so if you ever-

Shani: [laughs]

Greg: The hospitality business is a great business, so if any of your people are hospitable. Actually, that’s what I studied. I really enjoyed. You really learn how to do two things in hospitality business. Number one, you learn how to serve people. All right? Really, really important. You learn how to do a lot with a little. The restaurant business where I came out of is a penny business, so you learn how to make a penny stretch. You learn everything about people, whether it’s the people that you’re serving or the people that are working for you. I took that and I love that time in the hospitality business. I was in operations. I own my own restaurant. Then when I closed my restaurant, I’ve always, even when I was in operations, I had a knack for people. A former boss of mine said, “Hey, we have this HR position. Why don’t you consider it on the HR?” “I don’t know, I’m an ops guy, I don’t know anything about people stuff.” “No, you’ll be great. You’re always talking about the workforce and people and doing things right by them.”

Shani: Because you had that hard skills.

Greg: Right, it’s those hard skills. We jumped into that in the hospitality space, then I was fortunate just about I guess it’s coming up on eight years or so ago I’m able to come over in the OD role, organizational development role, then it’s grown since then. We’ve been very fortunate to have great people and mentors and people around me in our tribe that just do incredible work and certainly props me up pretty high.

Shani: I love that. Greg does talent management and OD for a living. However, he’s so passionate about it that you’ve made it into a personal brand for yourself with your LinkedIn presence as HR dad. Tell us what prompted that, what’s the journey been, and what’s next?

Greg: One of the things that people don’t know about me typically, is that I used to officiate college football. I did it for many years and I retired just about two years ago. The main reason why I retired was that I was missing a lot of things with my kids. I was missing events and I was missing sporting events on the weekends when I was gone. I made a decision at the height of my career to step back and do that. Now, I’m around a lot more, and my wife said, “You need to find a hobby because you’re around way too much now.” One of the things I wanted to do is I always loved to write and I loved writing. I write the way I speak from the heart and things that nature. I personally took up a hobby of writing and hired a writing coach. I was working with the writing coach and I was always talking about people in the workforce and HR things, and I was always talking about my kids, and then the intertwining of the family unit and what happens at work and how similar they are.

She goes, “You know what, you are great.” I didn’t know it was coming next because she goes, “You’re the HR, dad.” I go, “Huh.” She goes, “Can you live with that?” I go, “Yes, I’m okay with that.” I started using it. Now that we’ve got quite a bit of a following and I do things before work and at lunch and then after work and then I just inactive on LinkedIn and it’s been a lot a lot of fun.

Shani: It is fun, and I love watching the videos and some of the personal stories that you share, both in written form and and in the videos are heartwarming and interesting and that’s what people really love to hear because anyone can pontificate about this or that.

Greg: I just try to be authentic. In my time working with people, the thing you learn is that there’s an entire person. If you only talk to the business person, you’ll just get the business outcome. When you know that people go through crap in their life or they go through challenges or their life’s not perfect or they’re dealing with all kinds of stuff, whether it’s depression or kids all those– divorce, all those things that happen, it happens to everybody. When you talk about those things, people sit there and they go, “You know what, I’m not alone.” It’s really been amazing how that’s taken off a little bit but I just love to merge both things, work and family and the kids and what are great lessons from not only the workforce but also the family unit.

Shani: Yes, I love it. What’s next for HR dad?

Greg: I’m actually starting a podcast.

Shani: Great to hear.

Greg: Crazy how I’m doing that. I’m starting it, I’m just setting up the interviews now. It’s a podcast called Everyday People, Big Stories. It’s about people that are everyday people that have big stories. I really kicked around the idea, “Do I do an HR podcast, what do I do?”, and I love talking with with everyday people who get just the work done there in the middle their lives, they’re just trying to to get by and do their thing and a lot of times there are wonderful, wonderful stories that happen with people that it just might be a waitress or they might be a nurse or they might be a fireman or they might be a CEO that have an incredible story that they’ve battled through something or they have a great story to share of really that can help and empower somebody else to know that they’re not alone and they can certainly continue their growth as well. I’m really excited about that.

Shani: I love that idea. It reminds me of Humans Of New York.

Greg: I never heard of that.

Shani: It’s a Facebook page where that’s what they do, they highlight humans of New York and they’re just everyday people, if you will. They interview them and and Facebook goes up about little details about them. It’s so enrolling because everybody’s got a story, everybody’s interesting.

Greg: That’s where the magic happens, and so one of the things that we’re doing is that we’re having people nominate other people. You can’t just say, “Hey, I want to talk about this,” and it’s not about selling a service, it really is about now we’ll talk about what they’re doing in their life at one point in the interview but it really is about their story and sharing their journey that can maybe help somebody else. I’m really excited about that.

Shani: Congratulations, and nothing but the best as you roll that out. I’m so excited you’ll have to let me know when it starts.

Greg: I will. Another month, month and a half we should be good to go. We’re just want to get a bunch of recordings done first and squeezing it around work times is making it so, it’s weekend’s and we’re recording our night, that type of stuff. We’ll be getting at going as soon as we can.

Shani: So good. Between the everyday people and recognizing that when we’re at work, we’re still a whole person even though people think that we should have some invisible wall between our personal lives and our work lives. It’s impossible especially in this day and age and it reminds me of a story that another one of my clients tells a lot which is heart-wrenching almost. She came home from work one night and and her daughter was crying and she was like, “Hey, sweetheart, what’s wrong?” Daughter looks at her and says, “I hate your job.” She’s like, “Why?” She said, “Because your job makes you sad.” It’s always a wake-up call to her to be like, “Wow, like not only am I enduring whatever I’m enduring at work, but look at how this is affecting my kid. What’s the domino effect that that could have, what are the reverberations that could have?”

Greg: Yes. A unique place being in human resources and being able to impact and understand the issues that can occur within a workplace but I also understand that it just doesn’t end, just like your story you just told, it just doesn’t end when they leave the the front door of the building, at home. And likewise, they can you can learn these lessons. So many times my my kids teach me a lesson on– My daughter told me a similar thing the other day, she’s 13, so she doesn’t hold back, she’s 13 been going on 40, and she just told me, although sometimes she calls me Greg. She says-

Shani: She’s trying to discipline you, she’ll call you Gregory.

Greg: Yes, that was my mom then, but she said, “You’re working all the time.” I was like, “I got to make sure I’m making time and splitting and doing–” Every single person does that. Even if you’re not married or not or you don’t have kids, what you give back to yourself as well is so, so important. Just in a lucky space to be on the HR side and also being able change that mindset where it’s just not about policies and procedures and all these things, it really is about helping people live their life not only professionally but also support them in their personal journeys as well.

Shani: Amen. One of my last questions, what’s one of the things that you’ve shared as HR dad that has gotten the biggest or best or most unexpected reaction.

Greg: I did one video, and I had really hesitated doing video. I worked with a person and she’s like, “You got to do videos.” I was like, “I’m not doing videos. Look, I’m an eternal guy, I work at the U, I’m really good, I’m not doing video.” She goes, “No, you really need to do video.” I didn’t want her to and I still survive, I didn’t hyperventilate, I get out. Then I did this video of, I don’t know if you could tell but through this little camera but I’m not this person. I’ve some body to me, and so I did this video when I was walking and talking about trying to get in shape. As I was huffing and puffing on the first time walking again and talking about just about that exercise and reinvesting in yourself, something along those lines, and so a so I posted it and I went to bed. I had like a couple hundred people look at it. I was, “It’s pretty cool, couple other people looked at it.” In the morning I wake up and there I see there’s been 10,000 views. I went I looked I was like, “Something’s wrong with my phone. What is wrong? Something’s not right.”

Then I looked and I saw what happened was it influencer had commented on my video posts and she has this large following a couple million people and all of a sudden– I was in meetings all day, I got to lunch and all of a sudden at lunch, there’s 40,000 views. Then I go back to my next set of meetings, and now at night there’s a– it was over– Last time I checked, it was like a month or so ago. Last time I checked. It had been on over like 80,000 views 90,000 views and it was really obviously, I think it’s because of me, but it clearly was about Bridget Hyacinth who’s a big influencer on LinkedIn had commented on it and that was just the start of it, and all sudden now I had these followers and things of that nature, by just one person’s comment.

Shani: What do you think was about your video that caused her to comment on it and so many other people to want to watch it?

Greg: The biggest thing that I get and I ask people if they comment what would you like most about it, and 9 out 10 times they say, number one, it’s so real, it’s so authentic, it’s not staged, it’s not pontificating on something, it’s just somebody going through life and struggles with whether it’s weight management or eating too much, or not eating enough, whatever it is, somebody is drinking, whatever it is people have crap that they go through. I think that part resonates most with people and far and above and beyond that authenticity piece is huge, so which is really easy for me because that’s the way I lead. It’s an easy switch to a different type of platform to share that.

Shani: Good I love that. Folks, let’s thank Greg for joining us and review some of the key lessons that we learned throughout this conversation today. I want to challenge you, if you don’t already know what is your brand, well, as part of an organization and as a leader? ‘Cause HR Dad, yes it’s your LinkedIn personality and it’s been your personal professional brand, which is why it feels so natural for you. Because that’s how you influence culture is by owning who you are and being authentic. Every leadershifter watching this, I want you to pay specific attention over the next month or so to your brand and how it relates to your organization’s brand, and to also think about are you being a servant leader. We touched upon the benefit of you having to spent time in the restaurant hospitality space was you learned how to serve people, and that is something that’s necessary regardless of the industry you’re in and servant leadership is obviously a hot term or hot concept over the last few years, and I also loved that you shifted when you quit referring football into something else to be enthusiastic about that wasn’t totally the office, even though it’s HR dad is related to what you do, I can see just in interviewing you and being one of your followers that it’s so much more than that.

I can never emphasize enough to leadershifters just how important it is for you to be a whole person and to figure out what it is for you, that fulfills you and lights you up and to do more of that and to do less of the shit that drags you down. I feel like too many people spend too much time doing things that really drag them down. Those are just a few of the highlights that stood out to me. Greg, how can people reach you if they have questions and/or when you’re ready for them to watch Everyday People?

Greg: Well, I think the best way is on LinkedIn that’s where I hang out. You could always reach out to me my email there, anything you’d like, email me at [email protected]. We’re building that website and you can always reach out to me there, but LinkedIn is where I hang out the most and I’ll get back to you eventually. I really try to get to know my connections a little bit so I’ve really developed some great relationships with some people and it’s truly helped professionally because you learn so much from others people, so it’s been great. I’d love you to reach out and follow us, or connect with us. I’d really enjoy that.

Shani: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much and Leadershifters, I will also be promoting Everyday People when it comes out because I think it’s going to be an awesome podcast, knowing Greg and just the whole concept behind, it is fantastic. You know how to reach out to me, [email protected] and all of our various sundry social media outlets. Let’s thank Greg again for joining us today on The LeaderShift show. I think it would only be appropriate for us to end by throwing up to you.

Greg: Of course, of course

Shani: Bye.

Greg: Bye, see you Shani.

The post 31: Are “U” Merging Your Culture and Brand? with Greg Brenner appeared first on The LeaderShift Project.

My guest today is brand strategist, co-author of upcoming book Your Personal Career Coach, and Ironman athlete, Christy Noel. With a demanding career in marketing and branding, Christy took up running as a way to unwind from the long hours at the office. This hobby quickly turned into a passion for competing in Ironmans, and the extensive training and commitment also benefited her productivity and effectiveness at work – while working fewer hours and staying healthier. Her experience underscores something I encourage clients constantly – that having a passion outside of work will make you a better leader! We also discuss the latest and greatest in brand strategy, the elusive ROI of marketing efforts, and the importance of ensuring all external communications are on brand, not just your sales pitches.

TRANSCRIPT

Episode 30: How Ironman Training Led to Greater Professional Success with Christy Noel

Shani Magosky: Hello, Leadershifters and welcome back to The Leadershift Show. I am joined today by Christy Noel, who is joining us today from Manhattan Beach, California which is one of my favorite places in the country.

Christy Noel: Oh, thank you, Shani. Thank you for recognizing town. It’s pretty beautiful here, I can’t complain at all.

Shani: It’s phenomenal. So Leadershifters, let me just give you a little background on Christy and why I’m psyched to have her on the show today. Christy is a brand strategist and marketer, and that is relevant for anyone in any organization. Even if your functional area isn’t marketing, there’s no one that isn’t touched in some way by the marketing and branding of the product or service that your company or organization is involved in.

Christy is also a budding author, she’s got a book coming out late this year or early next year that she co-authored with her father, called Your Personal Career Coach and it’s full of stories about how to be successful in careers and shared from 25 other folks, and it’s going to be really interesting. The other thing I think is really admirable about Christy is, she is a former Ironman athlete and that takes a type of discipline that I personally find inspiring. So, welcome to the show, Christy.

Christy: Thank you, Shani. I’m really happy to be here, thanks for having me.

Shani: My pleasure. Before we get started, I want to explain why I am dressed a little more casually today than I normally am. I don’t know if you can see it fully in the screen so I’ll stand up a little bit. I have a shirt on that says, “I love Twitter Dublin.” Before my interview with Christy, I was on a call with my contact at Twitter Dublin, they’re one of my big clients and so I wore this shirt as part of team spirit. And as I was going to change the shirt to do the podcast, I was like, “Wait a minute, we’re going to be talking about branding and marketing and if nothing else, Twitter is a huge brand success story and they are in the marketing niche.” So I thought, “You know what? This fits the theme of today, I’m going to keep the damn t-shirt on.” [laughs]

Christy: I love it.

Shani: Now, when we talk about leader shifting, it can encompass a whole lot of different variables. Leaders have to shift their strategy and tactics, and their team composition, and their mindsets and so forth. In an area of business that I think has really made a huge shift over the past 10 or so years is branding and marketing which is, obviously, your wheelhouse. Let’s start off with some of the biggest shifts that you helped your clients navigate from a branding and marketing perspective.

Christy: Sure, happy to, Shani. If you think about marketing and branding, especially if you go back when it was really advertising, it was just how do I get my product or my service out there and let people know that they need to buy it and what’s the price. It was often a commodity, “I’m just going to see what’s available and I’ll buy which is the best value or the best price or something.” People don’t necessarily look at brands that way anymore, they want a relationship and that’s where I think brand really comes in. “Who do I feel really good about?” Whether I’m buying this refrigerator or I’m having a coach. “Help me, I need to know that there’s a connection there from an emotional level.”

So the branding has really come into play which is why you see large corporations on social media, trying to create a relationship with their consumers through Twitter, or Instagram, or whatever social media platform it is because– all marketers and branders have to know that and going with that shift of the mindset to know it’s not just about having the best product or the best price anymore. You need to establish a relationship because nobody wants to do business with somebody they’re not– they want to feel good about their decision and that’s an emotional decision more than it is about a price point or a features and benefits set.

Shani: Absolutely. Do you still face any resistance to digital marketing or mobile marketing, or do you think that the resistance to that is long gone?

Christy: I think the resistance is gone. I think how to best use it is still a learning phase for some corporations and some personal brands and people– there are so many social media options and they each have a different niche and a different strategy behind them and so-

Shani: Sure.

Christy: it’s often, “Do I do all of them? Do I do all of them only so well? Do I focus on a couple of them and do those really well?” Larger corporations have the ability of having a social media department, so they probably have people focused on each one of them. For smaller companies, and individual brands, and solopreneurs, that’s a little more challenging. And the algorithms are constantly changing so trying-

Shani: Yes.

Christy: -to stay on top of that is more challenging. I think everybody knows they need to be in the game but winning the game or being really good at it, that continues to be a challenge. And quite frankly, we don’t all know the mystery behind the algorithms so we’re kind of learning and you think you finally got it like figured something out, and then they shift it. It is a bit of a challenge but I don’t see that the resistance for people getting into social media these days, it’s just how can I best use it and what’s my own strategy for being successful in it.

Shani: Yes, It’s funny as I listen to you talk about algorithms after talking about personal relationships. It almost seems counterintuitive, and then here we are, turning our personal relationships yet they’re managed through algorithms.

Christy: No, you’re absolutely right. It is, yes. It is a little bit convoluted, I think.

Shani: Yes. I mean, the juxtaposition is kind of funny. My question is, what do you recommend to your clients in terms of how do you establish those personal relationships over platforms that are– you’re essentially speaking to millions of people? What’s the technique for really mastering that?

Christy: Yes, no. It’s a fair question and I would say, it’s one thing to share information and that’s what I think everybody’s good at, it’s the dialogue beyond that, that becomes the challenging part and the time-consuming part, so I understand why that can be challenging. But it’s making sure you’re responding to comments that you are commenting on other people’s posts or looking in the target audience that you want to be in and being involved and engaged in part of the conversation, and that is not just a one-way relationship.

I would also advise that don’t try to be in all the platforms if you don’t have the bandwidth to do it. It’s better to focus on a couple and be really good, and really involved, and really active in those than to spread yourself too thin over several of them and just kind of be halfway. I was going to say half-assed, I don’t know if I can say that on the podcast. [laughs]

Shani: Oh, you can curse on my show, girlfriend. No problem. [laughs]

Christy: I had a feeling with you, Shani, that that was going to be okay. Yes, so that’s really what it’s about. That’s how you see the successful influencers in social media are very engaged and that’s why, and that’s what people are looking for now.

Shani: Right. What would you say to a client who is fascinated by shiny objects? Thinking that the way they’re going to have the conversation is through doing something crazy, zany, new versus just having an authentic dialogue. Is there a benefit to one or the other?

Christy: Well, shiny objects syndrome is real and I’ve fallen into that trap as well. I think the first is to recognize if it is a trap. If you’re going to go all in and you can actually fall of– I’ve had people say, “How do I go viral?” I said, “Well, nobody starts off by saying here’s our go-viral strategy.” If I knew, I’ll be doing it, right? We’d love it but that’s just not how it works.

Things go viral organically because there’s something in it that excited people and they wanted to share it, so doing something crazy, zany is good if you’re going to follow through it and it will get attention but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to go viral. You want to just try it and drop it, and go play with the next shiny object. You have to be all in but if it’s different– all of the successes of things that have gone viral were usually started because they were different. But I would not say go in with that strategy to go viral but just to break through and maybe do something different. Maybe it’s a different approach for your own brand to grab attention or do a rebrand and say hey maybe we were used to be a little bit more corporate and stuffy but now look at us we’ve got a different attitude or something. That’s all fine but again it’s you just don’t do it once and walk away and that won’t work.

Shani: That leads me to a related thread which is the intersection of corporate culture and grant. Culture as everybody who listens or watches me knows is really one of my passions and I think that an effective powerful culture is what paves the way for business success and not enough companies pay attention to it. Having a great internal culture is only part of it though. It’s also how do you translate that culture into external branding so that there’s alignment between the internal culture and the external culture brand perception. How do you do that?

Christy: Well, I agree with you and culture is so important just for the morale and having a successful company but because we’ve been talking about social media that’s also why it’s so important. Because if your employees are happy and they’re totally excited about your brand they’re going to share that on social media and so you have these brand ambassadors from your own employee group. Now it’s not just the corporate communications or the marketing department doing it. You have tens of hundreds of thousands of employees saying all sorts of positive things and being in the dialogue as well. If you don’t have a good culture they’re not doing that or even worse they’re participating in a negative way not in a positive way.

Shani: Then they see their shitty Glassdoor reviews.

Christy: Exactly. Corporate culture is even more important now because it used to be- well, it was just not a good place to work and nobody was happy, now they’re sharing it. If it’s not a nice place to work and nobody’s happy; the world knows about it.

Shani: Right. People vote with their wallet.

Christy: Exactly. We’ve seen brands struggle because of one employee had a bad experience with an airplane passenger or something and everybody hears about it now you’re thinking I don’t know, do I want to fly them or not or do I want to go to that store or not? It’s kind of what we’re talking about before you want to have a positive corporate culture anyway, you don’t want to feel beholden that you have to make it a good culture just because you want people to be not saying negative things on Glassdoor. There is a truth to that and that it’s people are vocal they’re sharing their feelings they’re sharing what they’re responsible. They’re sharing what their experiences are.

Shani: Customer-clients experience with brand could evolve anything along the line or any area of business within a company. It’s obviously ideal if there can be some consistency to how the various interactions with someone maybe in collections has the same corporate culture vibe as an interaction with someone in sales or in any other area.

Christy: Exactly. If you think about the sales process somebody probably started with a sales call with a county executive once they signed up they probably went to an account manager or some type of client services person if they have any problems they go to customer support. As you said if they’re in billing issues to find they’re talking to somebody in finance. That should be consistent as far as a positive experience is somebody that’s helping you trying to do their best to help you all the way through and every touchpoint it’s a positive experience. It’s not out of joint like wait a minute my sales rep is so nice but then I went talk to these other three departments and I don’t know what happened there. It’s not that hard to do it right and it’s really easy to screw it up and make it [crosstalk]

Shani: Absolutely. Leadership just, let’s pause and really underline the importance of this and the communication that is not just between you and customers but also has to take place internally to match the impact you want to have on customers. I’ll give you just a quick example, one of my best friends was hired some years back by a very large bank financial services institution that had done a bunch of different mergers.

They did something really smart because they realized that they had customers who were getting communications both written and email communications from three or four different business units that were all under the big corporate umbrella and they had different messaging they had different tones and therefore different breathing. That is confusing as hell for the customer and on top of it a lot of the communications were legalese speak which was not consistent with the brand that they were trying to build through all these acquisitions. They were trying to build a consumer-friendly brand and even though it was a big bank, friendly interactions with your local bankers.

They were trying to really give off that vibe of we’re approachable we’re friendly and yet a lot of communications they were sending out to their customers were full of all this bullshit legal language so totally inconsistent. They hired her to overhaul all the communications not only get rid of all of the duplications and overlaps but also to put some of that legal stuff which can be necessary in a high regulated industry into plain language. If you’re not thinking along those lines about how to overhaul communication internally and externally to align your brand and your culture, you’re missing the boat.

Christy: Yes, I couldn’t agree more. If you look at companies that especially if they have videos maybe they have videos about the company or the product and they’re fun and lively and light-hearted and then as you say but then I get this notice that’s legalese and I don’t even know what. That part goes through your social media too. What’s your tone of voice in your social media in your corporate videos in your communication. There’s ways if you’re as light-hearted and fun you can still talk about legalese at least opening it up with that light-hearted have fun and then say or you could even say hey sorry this is a legalese piece, we have to do this and we know it’s going to be boring, but hey get ready. Strap in [crosstalk]. It doesn’thave to sound like the corporate attorney wrote it and nobody else touched it. There are ways to still do your financial information or your corporate information or your legal information and still be on brand. You just might have to be a little bit more creative.

Shani: Let me ask you one more thing which I know is a hot button to this day which is ROI on marketing efforts.

Christy: Yes, indeed.

Shani: Obviously, there’s lots of different metrics and data that can be gleaned from social media interactions and so forth but how do you recommend that your CMOs that are clients present that to the c-suite to prove that the marketing dollars that they are spending are yielding fruit?

Christy: The age-old challenge of marketing dollar ROI and it becomes even muddier when you throw in social media and some of the organic work that we do through SEO and things like that. What I would say is it’s never going to be a perfect ROI but there are other metrics you can track. You can track engagement, you can track your web stats as visitors and clicks and links and stuff like that. If you do paid advertising on social then there are some metrics there but I think it’s something like even in social now what we have done historically is we look at that as one of several touchpoints. It’s not the conversion point. We can generate a leave but that doesn’t necessarily go straight to a sale on social.

There’s still several touchpoints but it’s an opening often for awareness. That’s the approach that most CMO– if you’re looking to have a perfect model with an Excel spreadsheet that’s going to show some dollars on this, that’s going to be challenging. It’s just all part of the marketing mix and so your overall ROI should fall into the numbers or if it’s a percentage of sales or however you create your marketing budget. You need to doing it, you just can’t necessarily say well we responded to all those tweets and therefore, we created X number sales. It just doesn’t happen that way.

Shani: It’s never going to be a factory where we can measure the exact return on investment or return on asset in the same scientific way.

Christy: Yes. The nice thing about social media is they do give you all sorts of metrics to measure engagement, and shares, and likes and things like that, so you can show growth. It said engagement 17 times here in the last 30 seconds, but it’s true.

Shani: That’s what it’s all about, right?

Christy: Yes. That’s what you’re measuring. You can use that information to see what resonates with your audience, so if videos do well or light-hearted jokes or funny GIFs or pictures or something. You can use that to align your strategy more so that you get more engagement and all that information. Again, take another touchpoint to hopefully lead to the sale, but it’s an investment that you have to make whether its staff or time or a consultant or an agency but it’s not something you can avoid even though you can’t have the perfect number.

Shani: Yes, I got it. I want to shift a little bit here and talk about your Ironman experience. One of the reasons it interests me so much is, first of all, just the discipline that it takes to train for those things doesn’t even seem human to me.

Christy: Thank you.

Shani: I’m in awe and thematically, having some balance between work and your other life is so important. I think not enough hardcore career people have something that they’re really passionate about outside of work. I’d love to hear how you got into it and how you managed to have a senior level career and devote the time it takes to train for an Ironman.

Christy: I can talk about this all day. Thank you for bringing it up. I got into it because of pretty much what you just said, Shani. I was working too long, too many hours. I had a gym membership that I wasn’t using and going to. I called up a friend of mine and she had moved to Seattle and told me about this female triathlon series that was in Seattle.

I said, “You know what? The only way I’m going to get out of the office is to have a goal.” Signing up for this triathlon is I think going to be my goal. It has really forced me to train. We did that together and had never done anything. Yes, I’d run a little bit and I swam as a kid, I knew how to ride a bike, but I never done anything competitively like that. We didn’t know what we were doing.

I started training out of booked triathlon for women and in a way, I went and loved it. I had a wonderful time. That one was again all women so it was very supportive. It was not competitive. It was, “You go, girl,” wherever you turned and stuff like that. I did that for a few years and at the same time, my stepdad had started to get in triathlons as well. He did a Half Ironman and an Ironman. He kept saying, “Well, you should do that with me.” I was, “Okay.” Saying okay not even knowing what I was saying okay to. Next thing I know, I’m training for a full Ironman. What I like and why I like discussing that, other than it was an incredible day is that all the things that you said. It requires time management skills. It requires commitment. It requires dedication.

You don’t get the opportunity to say, “Yes, I don’t feel like working out today.” You really have to say, “Whatever’s on the schedule, I’m doing it whether I feel like it or not,” and it does and because the training is so intensive, you don’t get the opportunity to say like, “I’m working late tonight. I can’t go to the pool.” It has to be pretty big to keep you from out of that because you’re going to be showing up at the starting line of an Ironman if you’re not trained. It becomes dangerous.

Shani: Did you find yourself more effectively managing the time you were at work so that your productivity skyrocketed?

Christy: Yes, exactly. That did help me because I could get distracted and work long hours, but I wasn’t always productive in those hours. They were just hours spend there and then I’d work and get something up. I was really forced to say, “Okay, I’ve got to be at the pool by 9:00 o’clock, so I’ve gone to be out of here by 7:00 o’clock,” to make that happen and what needs to be done and make sure I got everything done off my to-do list. It really has improved my time management skills, not just for training but for being focused. I work and realizing that there’s only so many hours of focus days. You can put it into four hours, or eight hours, or 12 hours but you’re still probably only getting those same number of focused time.

Shani: Right. Well, what is it, is it Peterson’s principle or something like that that the tasks expand to fill the amount of time allotted to do it?

Christy: Exactly. I tell people it doesn’t have to go full-on to an Ironman, but if it’s something, whether it’s a 5k or if it’s a walk, or if it’s a Zumba class or something, it’s great to have the goal to get you to force yourself to get out of the office or to stop working and make sure you do balance your time. Maybe it’s coaching your kids’ little league team or being a Girl Scout leader or something to really force you to get what needs to be done, but also know that there’s life outside of that office.

Shani: Hundred percent. Leadershifters, if you don’t have a passion outside of work, go get one immediately. It’s so important to have that balance and to have something else that lights you up and is going to fulfill you in life. Not to be morbid but do you want it to be on your gravestone that she worked 14-hour a day or he was a really good vice president. Do you want it written on your tombstone like she was really passionate about whatever it is. That’s really what life’s all about and it makes us better at what we do at work and more productive. Lastly, let’s move on and talk about this upcoming book that you have. I’m super excited about it, so give us a very quick sense of how it came together and what’s going on there.

Christy: Sure. Thank you. I’d be happy to. Real quick, in my career, I’ve worked primarily for men and with men and had some typical female bumps along the road of learning curves. I have had this envisioned to write a book to help other women to fast-track through some of the mistakes and issues that I had. The notes to me and my dad had a similar aspiration to write a book to help young people overcome some of the learnings that he had in the business world when he came up as the first person in his family to go to college and have a professional career with no real mentors. We both had these aspirations on the side and came together and realized, “Well, we could do this together.”

Hence, your personal career coach. We call them stories because it’s first-person stories about our experience. It’s not just an instructional type of career advice book. It’s a book full of different stories by 25 or 26 contributing authors of our own experience. Some of them are successes and some of them were failures or learning experiences, let’s say, to share with other people their short stories so you can come in and read just one.

You could read a chapter if you’re getting ready to interview on the interviewing chapter. It doesn’t have to be cover to cover. You can pick it up when you need it and the lessons learned are through our experiences. It’s a little more fun. A little easier read, so we’re really excited about it. It’s been really fun to work with our contributing authors because we have people with totally different backgrounds and experiences and sharing because they want to help other people succeed and avoid some of the things that we’ve all encountered.

Shani: Yes. What are just a couple of the favorite themes in the stories because it sounds like there’s quite a lot of them. If you could just pick out one or two that really stand out to you as your favorites.

Christy: Yes. Well, we have a lot of great information on job interviewing and job searching. One of the ones that I share is that I thought I had a great interview but it turned out I blew it. The trap that you get into when you think it’s going well but it’s not. I share some stories about balancing work and pleasure and getting caught in the trap of spending too much time at the office and not enough time with family and friends.

One of the things I like is this idea of- because we touched on it, working longer and harder versus actually working smarter. I was the one putting in all the hours and at the office late. All I was doing was getting recognized as the person that was there for the long hours while other people were working much fewer hours and getting rewarded and I thought, “Well, that’s not fair.” It’s because they had the productivity. They were selling, they were closing, they were doing these things that was rewarded. Nobody cares. At the end of the game, nobody cares how many hours you’re there. They care what the results are.

Shani: Hunderd percent.

Christy: I had to learn that lesson, hence the changes that I made in my life. Sitting at the office for 14 hours a day doesn’t do anything, except for, “Well, Christy is there 14 hours a day.” I didn’t want that on my gravestone. Working with your bosses and managing people, having integrity, they’re all really great lessons for anybody that’s looking to have a career in the corporate world.

Shani: I love it. I love that it’s written with stories. Nothing drives me crazier than pedantic business books. This sounds like it will be a lot of fun to read. You have to let me know when it finally gets published, so I can announce the publication to the Leadershifters so they can pick up your book.

Christy: I’d be happy to. Thank you very much.

Shani: We have a lot of great takeaways from our conversation today. I just want to do a quick wrap-up. First of all, brand strategy, folks, no longer just about- one of the future benefits of your brand. Branding is all about dialogue and conversation and engagement and communication, not just with your customers about the product or service, but also all of the communications that your customer may be getting. It will involve also internal conversations about how any functional area is communicating with the world at large.

I thought it was also interesting when we talked about- I like that you called it shiny object syndrome. Well, sure, that could be a winning strategy that goes viral, but it’s not something that you can ever predict. Really the best strategy is to be on brand and keep having those conversations and the authenticity and the vulnerability that you show as a brand. That’s actually what tends to garner consumer loyalty more than some cool filter or something like that.

Lastly, this whole piece about finding something to be passionate about outside of work, to give you that discipline, to make you more productive and to make you a more whole human being so that you do show up as your best self when you are working. Thanks for leading us to this conversation. How can people reach you if they want to know more or want to hire you to be a brand strategist?

Christy: Well, thank you. Yes, I’m at christynoel.com. C H R I S T Y N O E L dot com. All my contact information is there and a little bit more about me.

Shani: Terrific. Thank you so much. Leadershifters, thanks again for joining us on The Leadershift Show. We’ll see you again next week. In the meantime, if you have any grand ideas for other fabulous people for me to interview in The Leadershift Show, please reach out [email protected] and, of course, all of our various and sundry social media outlets where we hope we are generating fun dialogue and being on brand, which for me is all about fun and reverence and practical business tips. Love some feedback on that whenever you have it. Thanks again and see you next week.

The post 30: How Ironman Training Led to Greater Professional Success with Christy Noel appeared first on The LeaderShift Project.

Managing your own and your team’s energy is a key to maximizing daily productivity and avoiding long term burnout. Today’s guest, Energy Master Jeanine Hofs, shares the system she developed for identifying dominant energy types based on the 5 natural energies in Chinese medicine: Fire, Earth, Metal, Wood, and Water. If you like DISC, MBTI, and other similar assessments, you’ll love this framework for thinking about how to build, communicate with, and motivate the most impactful teams. My type is Wood, characterized by achievement  big dreams, organization, and trust. Join us to learn what your type is!

TRANSCRIPT

Episode 29: Creating a Culture of Energy Mastery with Jeanine Hofs

Shani: Hello, Leadershifters. Welcome to another edition of the Leadership show with Shani. Do I have a special treat for you today? We are joined by Jeanine Hofs from the Netherlands, form about an hour south of Amsterdam, so everybody say hi to Jeanine. Jeanine is what we like to call an energy master, and I know that sounds like, wow. Master. She really is a technology master because she is a true mentor, coach, and consultant in all things energy management. She teaches people techniques so that they can sustain their energy throughout their whole life and in the day to day of working, and leadership ’cause we know how important it is when we’re going after these huge goals to manage our energy and not get burnt out.

We’re going to talk about energy management today with Jeanine, including the results of my energy type test and that will lead to a discussion of perhaps what type of energy you have and how you can use that to relate even better to the people around you in your life. Jeanine, welcome to the show.

Jeanine: Well, thank you, Shani. Thank you so much. I love being here. I’m excited.

Shani: Great. Well, let’s get right into it. Give Leadershifters a sense of exactly what you do.

Jeanine: Okay. I teach people and I help people with energy management techniques because I believe energy management is the most important thing you have. That’s your biggest asset. From there, you can achieve everything. Everything works from the inside out. That’s what I want. I want to teach people how they can muster their energy their biggest asset, so they can master their life, their business, their health, every area of their life.

Shani: Absolutely. Okay. How did you get into this?

Jeanine: I think I’d been working with energy or interested in energy all my life. When I was a little girl, I read books from Anthony Robbins, my mentor, and big example. Also Wayne Dyer. Then I started to see that you can influence your life by thinking differently, feeling differently. I’m a water-energy type myself so that means I like many things, many people. I’m interested in every subjects all at school. I wanted to do everything so I went from making my own clothes and being a fashion designer, to accounting, to programming. I’m a programmer in computer science. Then I ended up at the gym, the health club of my family. That’s where I learned the western part of energy.

So from mitochondria to ATPs, I know everything about energy on cellular level, the western side of energy. Then I came into contact with the Chinese philosophy and Chinese medicine. I started to learn that. It took me four years to do the study. Then I opened to practice in acupuncture and herbs, and I’ve read a book on energy. I rolled into both sides of energy. Do the western side but also the eastern side and that gave me a complete new and whole idea on energy. Because energy is so much more than going to the gym twice a week and eating healthy. It’s so, so, so much more. Yes, that’s my world right now. It is fantastic to work with that.

Shani: That is so fascinating. I love the varied path that you took in and I relate to you so much because it sounds like you do some really left-brain things like the accounting, the computer coding. It’s some of the right-brain thing with the clothing design and the energy. I love it. I think there’s so many people have those diverse interest and don’t know how to reconcile it in ultimately knowing your energy type will help you understand why you like certain things and create diversity or not. How many types of energies have you identified in your system?

Jeanine: Within this system, I work with five types. Because there are five elements in the Chinese philosophy.

Shani: Yes.

Jeanine: That’s fire, earth, metal, water, wood, then you have fire again. We have them all inside of us because that’s what nature is made up of. Everything that lives or is there or is organic has those five movements. They’re really their movements of energy. We have them all because we are a part of nature too, of course. We have them all, but there’s always one dominant energy. From that dominant energy, you will make choices when you are mad or sad. You will react from your dominant energy type. Yes, I could talk for hour, weeks. I think about those energies, it’s amazing. In China, they use this too for work there, compose music, to reorganize businesses or leads those businesses but also for your health. When there’s something wrong with you. For example, when you have a headache that’s one of the signals of wood energy being in stagnation for example. It usually fits and it’s like a jigsaw puzzle.

Shani: Wow. Okay. Leadershifters, before we started the show Jeanine and I were talking off-camera. I woke up today with a headache and I am wood energy, so what Jeanine describing that a headache meaning wood energy is feeling stagnated. Let’s actually go right into the energy test that you had me take in advance of the show and explained to the Leadershifters what wood energy is, and how you knew from my test that I was wood energy and what that means.

Jeanine: Yes. How I know that you are wood energy is because you took the test. I don’t know you and I have a big test and a smaller one you could do in two or three minutes. Then you have a good idea of what your dominant energy type at the moment is. Wood energy is like the energy of spring. For example, you don’t look outside for one week because you’re the holiday or something. Then you return, you’re like, “What happened?” Everything is growing and everything was like this high grass and now it’s that high. Wood energy has power but never random. It’s always organized.

People with wood energy high in their profile, they know how to organize, how to plan. They also want to achieve things. They always have a goal and they go towards that goal. They know what they want, how to get there and they want to win. Like every element, this element has qualities of course and also has pitfalls because we all have them. When you take a quality like the power to grow and to see the big picture. When you do that too much, you grow, grow, grow and you don’t see the tiny details or you don’t have an assistant for the details or you don’t work together with somebody with earth energy for the details, then you will lose control of your business or your ideas because you never finish something because you’re going, going, going to the next new thing bigger, bigger and bigger. That’s what wood energy is and has qualities and also pitfalls when you exaggerate the qualities.

Shani: Yes, absolutely. I see that a lot that many times someone’s biggest strength when it’s overplayed can become a liability. We have to learn to modulate and keep it in the straight zone.

Jeanine: Also, that’s the beauty of this test. I do with people is, then you know what to focus on. For example, for you Shani if you have wood energy high up in the profile, it’s not good for you to focus on the tiny details even if you have a business. You need to focus on the tiny this, but you don’t need to focus on those.

Shani: I do, I get so frustrated when I feel like I’m in the weeds I just want to come out.

Jeanine: It’s necessary for the business or for the job you have or do, then you better work together with somebody who is interested and whose specialty is any details. For example, earth energy. They work a little slower. It’s also your allergy, so you have to watch out for that. I always say, “It feels nice to hire people or work together in a team with people from the same energy, but you also have this thing– pitfalls. When we’re together with an opposites element, then you were little in fight mode because their opposites. You’ll be annoyed from this person being slow, or too exact, or too much into details, but it’s necessary because it’s yin-yang balance again.

Shani: What’s the opposite of wood energy for me?

Jeanine: Earth and/or metal because you have five, so there are two in the opposite. The next one, from wood, you have fire as the next one. Wood is heating fire because you can put woods on the fire, but the opposite from earth. If wood energy can, they say the first next one is, you can fit the element. Second next one, you can control that element. For example, if earth energy is too slow because it falls, wood energy is the one to say, “Hey, hurry up, please.” That’s the controlling parts within these elements. [crosstalk]

Shani: Energy is grounded and stable, like you would intuitively think.

Jeanine: Yes. Yes. It’s also earth is very social elements, always wants to please people, wants harmony within a team and within people, groups of people, also is very diplomatic, doesn’t like hard words. It’s a bit softer. The pitfall in it is that people take care of other people more than they do about themselves. They never put themselves in the first position. It has a little bit less of that. Earth energy is very sensitive to this. [crosstalk]

Shani: Tell us a little bit more about fire energy.

Jeanine: Fire is like the summer. Everything, in wood time has grown. It’s peak in summertime. That’s the peak of yang energy. Ther’s a lot of heat, and those persons have a lot of heat, too. They’re like, “Da, da, da.” They talk and they talk and they talk and they talk, and they love talk to many people as much as they can. This is fire energy. I’m doing this right now. It was very rising energy. They talk a lot, not very good listeners. They’re very social. They don’t like to be alone. They’re very forgiving, the most forgiving of all the elements. They believe everybody makes mistakes. I make mistakes. You make mistakes, so what? So I can mention them. When you have somebody who is talkative, “Da, da, da,” and laughing and says, “You stupid hair,” talks again, and you’re like, “What? What did she say?” It’s normal for fire because they believe everybody makes mistakes. Everybody has thingy. I can mention them because I forgive them immediately.

Shani: They’re the ultimate extroverts.

Jeanine: Yes.

Shani: Got it. As you’re describing, I keep thinking of all the people in my life and being like, “Oh, he’s a fire.” [crosstalk] How about water? You said you’re water, so tell us a little bit about that water.

Jeanine: Sometimes a little difficult for me to say that because then I talk about myself, so sometimes a little bit of a harder. Water is the energy of opposites within one element. Water can be very quiet and can be alone, likes to be alone, needs the most alone time of all the elements, but also likes to put in a little drama, or have red hair, or have strange clothes, or wear funny shoes. Water is a dreamer. Water has dreams, always knows, like water where it wants to go. When water is in its qualities, water knows. I want to go there, that’s my dream and I will get there. I just know I will get there. If you put a rock in my way, I don’t fight the rock, I go over or I pass it on the left side or the right side or both. I even erode this [crosstalk]

Shani: You could have been decorated the rock. [laughs]

Jeanine: Yes, for example. You don’t fight. That’s the quality of water. You have trust. You believe and you have dreams, and you go for it. Water people are always much and many. They like many things. They like to study everything. They are multi-passionate. Sometimes many of them know a lot of things. Knowledge, knowledge, knowledge.

Shani: Sure. That’s fantastic. The last one is metal. Yes?

Jeanine: That’s all. Metal is in between earth and water. Metal energy types are most introvert of them all. Water is double. It’s both. Metal is introverted and likes to be alone too, doesn’t like big groups. If you have an entrepreneur who is metal energy, you would advise him or her to create this online business, for example. You better not suggest doing a challenge with 5,000 people. No, no, no. Go one-on-one. Go do VIP packages because they like the one-on-one connection, real soul, deep connection. They don’t talk with many gestures. I’m not metal. They talk softly.

Shani: Neither. [laughs]

Jeanine: They like structure. This is how we set up this plan so we’re going to do it like this. This is how we play the game. I’m going to be really angry if you don’t do as you said before, if you don’t play by the rules. They are very attached to routines, structures, and doing as you should do. That’s a pitfall too because other people could have different meanings or values in life, not so because– metal knows two things, white or black. You always have to teach them, “What are you grateful for?” They’re like. “I’m grateful for the–” No, no, no, because I have to paint the roof, only not the house. I’m grateful for my– no, no, no. It needs oil change. I’m grateful for my clothes. No, no, no, because I gained a little weight. I always have to put them in the middle. You can be grateful for 50% of it, or, “Oh yes, oh yes, that’s a thing, too.” [laughs]

Shani: Interesting. As you’re talking, I’m thinking about some of the similarities of the various energy types to another assessment that I’m certified in and I use a lot which is DISC. I’m sure that some of the folks that are listening and watching are thinking the same thing, and saying, “Well, I know my Myers Briggs type or my DISC type or my inside type.” There’s obviously a variety of these different tools. Tell me how the energy type testing results is either different than the same as, or compliment some of these other assessments.

Jeanine: I think when you take the other tests, and you put them on top of each other, then you will see a red line. Do you say this in English, a red line or a threat? That’s what we see in the Netherlands.

Shani: Like a theme.

Jeanine: Yes. You see a theme. You see similarities. You should because, otherwise, one or the other isn’t true or isn’t working. They have similarities. For me, what I like in those five elements that you can use them all on your physical health, your emotional, your physical being, your emotional being. For example, I’m water energy. I have to be very careful with my knees and my back. If I have problems with my knees and my back, I know, “Oh, now– image or that’s too big of a word. “I’m a little vulnerable in my main energy so I really have to take care of this.

I also know as a mentor and coach when somebody has a certain physical complains that I now, “I have to watch out for this energy, and I can give these tips to this person to strengthen that again. I’m right to the point. I don’t have to take the whole picture. I can go right to the point with it. That’s a big difference, and that’s what I love about differentiating between within those five elements, but you’re right, you can compare those systems with each other, same as you can compare Myers-Briggswith four colors, the DISC colors.

Shani: Yes. Okay. Really interesting. I love that because it sounds like people will recognize the energy types from having done some of these other more corporatey assessments and your system gives people a way to manage not just what their behaviors are, but sort of who they are. How they can help them manage their energy, which is kind of where I want to go next. Because to me what is so intriguing about this is how to use it in an organization to help build the culture because that’s obviously one of the big things that the Leadershifter’s project is about is how do we help leaders build the right cultures in their organization so that their people can thrive, and they want to execute on the business strategy. Tell me how you would work with a company, and you can even give me give the example you were sharing with me offline. Jeanine is currently working with a software company and all the folks in the company have taken this. How would you work with a leader or with a company to implement this and help shift their culture?

Jeanine: Yes, thank you. That’s a great question because it’s so important that leaders don’t just theoretically lead the company but they use the qualities of their people. That they use- that’s not the right word, enhance; so they use the qualities for the best of the company. If you can enhance somebody’s qualities, if you can enhance somebody’s energy, then they will give you everything they have. Then they will work with pleasure for you. Then they will feel free within the company, they will feel recognized. They will feel seen and heard.

For example, if you are a leader in your company, and you have a team; small or big, doesn’t matter, and you know he or she is a wood energy type, he or she really wants to be heard. Let’s say it’s a him, let him talk because that’s what fire wants, but also you have to be careful because when you give him a finger, he will take your hand, and arm, and everything. You need to be careful because he will take over the company within like a week, so you need to give fire boundaries, for example. If you have earth energy types in your company, you will know. They’re very nurturing, they will be like the mother or the father of the whole team.

You can recognize those people by saying, “Oh. I really love what you give us. I really love what you do for this team. You are so gentle, you give away so much to us and it feels wonderful that you take care of us, you feed us.” Then earth feels recognized and they will give you more and more. Water likes to be recognized for his knowledge. Metal likes to be recognized- metal can work, like solopreneur, very good and it’s very good in organizing and structure, et cetera. You need to help metal with– metal likes– no, it doesn’t like, but it is– I’m looking for the English words, I’m sorry. Sometimes the translation is a bit lost. Metal–

Shani: Motivated by?

Jeanine: It thinks in a negative way, that’s the first thing metal thinks, in a negative way.

Shani: They default to negativity.

Jeanine: Yes, correct. You need to help him or her to see the good things in a company, in a team, in what he’s doing. Stop him and say, okay, now stop and smell the roses. What you did is wonderful, and do you see this or that. You’re great and then metal feels good again and then will work double as hard as before. Then you have wood energy and wood energy are your leaders. Those are the ones who can network very good, who can coach a team. who can lift the team up to a next level and can see the big picture of where the company needs to go.

When a leader knows these characteristics and knows and recognizes what energy is in a team, then he can hire for example, more wood energy into his team, or he can hire more earth energy for the balance. Sometimes I do these workshops with companies and then I let them find out what energy types they are, and it’s a great team-building where they go, oh now I know who is fire and everybody goes, he is fire. That’s a great team building.

Shani: Everybody can appreciate each other so much better.

Jeanine: Exactly, and you know which tasks are for which types. For example, water like me can be very chaotic, so water needs maybe a metal energy type to work together and say, okay, first this than that, then that. Not playing around with new things. Okay, finish it and no chaotic behavior, just do it.

Shani: I can see using this tool for shaping the team and for interviewing, recruiting, and making sure that there’s a diverse, all five elements on the team because a lot of mistakes that I see people making is, “Oh, we want to hire people that are culture fit.” Which in some organizations is sort of code for, we’re going to hire people that are just like us. We’re not going to have the breadth of expertise and skillset and so forth. It’s important to hire folks that that are different and that can complement each other so that it’s more like woven the fabric of our team.

Jeanine: Exactly. Then you have a whole because five elements are always there in the company, in a person, in nature, and they will always move together like the elements or the seasons. You need them all, so when you hire only fire and wood, it will be one screaming bunch of people always–

Shani: Oh gosh, my body just hurt when you said just hiring a company that’s all wood and fire, and obviously I’m wood, but I can’t even imagine working with all people who are like me and fire, it would be exhausting.

Jeanine: Exactly. Also for the people who are working in the team, it’s so good for them to know their type. It’s good for them to know how can I improve my energy. For water, for example, needs to rest, needs to shut down, retract and be out of sight. For fire, it means go have a party. For wood, it means it could be retracted, but also go and do something with speed, or something new, or something exciting [crosstalk]. For earth maybe massage.

Shani: Traveling all over the world.

Jeanine: Do you like speed? Driving in your car very fast or–

Shani: Yes, so fun. All right, so let me ask, let me play devil’s advocate for a second because there are leaders in the world who may be listening to this and going okay, this sounds like a bunch of “woo-woo bullshit”.

Jeanine: Woo-woo, yes, it is.

Shani: What would you say to that person?

Jeanine: You could see it as woo-woo. It depends on what you are used to because is nature woo-woo? Is it woo-woo that after spring, summer comes in, and after that you have the Indian summer and then you have autumn again, that’s not woo-woo.

Shani: No, there’s nothing more reliable than the changes that [crosstalk]

Jeanine: Yes, it’s working with nature. I can explain, that’s because I have a better brain. I can explain to cellular level why this is, why energies of the same frequency attract each other. Why the law of attraction works and why it doesn’t work. If you do it the wrong way. I can explain this to you on cellular level, but it takes me a few hours to do so. Is it woo-woo? No, not at all. It is it is science; only we’re not used to that. It is the management techniques, the energy management techniques, I use are soft techniques. Yes, that’s true. It’s not program, although, I reprogram people, I help them reprogram their own brain. Is it woo-woo to say, I need to shift my mindset? No, it isn’t.

Shani: No. A lot of times what it takes to succeed is to get unstuck from an unhook mindset.

Jeanine: I do believe that in order for me to help my people best, is they need to be interested. They need to be curious about it, that’s enough. If you’re curious about it, that’s enough. You don’t need to understand the whole process, because I don’t need– yes, I do understand how electricity works, but that’s the better brain, but normally not everybody knows how a painkiller works, not everybody knows how the electricity works, still you use it. You don’t need to know every process because if you did, you were expert in it, you would be doing this stuff. Hire your experts and if you’re curious, that’s enough.

Shani: Got it. I love that. In fact, I’m going to use that because sometimes it is hard to get through to people who are so– maybe they are, let’s see, the ones who are black and white are–

Jeanine: Metal, yes.

Shani: Yes, I wrote on my notes in there. The working with metals who see things in the black and white and they’re like, “It’s too esoteric to talk about elements, I’m comfortable thinking people are a high D or a low S, an ENTP or whatever it is,” but those are assessments that have been made by humans and not that they’re not great, I love them. What I love about this is we’re working with nature, with the natural cycles and there actually is nothing more scientific than aligning with what exists on the planet on, with the earth and the elements, it’s very, very cool.

Jeanine: We’re too much on the Yang side, we’re too much on the masculine side. That’s the male-female thing, Yang is the masculine energy, we could translate it as masculine and the Yin energy could be translated as the female, leadership, power. It has nothing to do with male or female, but we, in the whole world, in businesses as well, have too much Yang energy and that’s why many of those companies, they turn around slowly, you see that. That are the companies who are most successful right now, and the ones who are stuck, they’re stuck in this Yang energy, controlling, “I wanted like this. We need to have a pyramid form of power.” That’s Yang energy and that’s not the balance, only Yang energy is always daytime and ever night, always hot water and never cold water. It’s not in balance. It takes some getting used to, but slowly, slowly, bit by bit.

Shani: Yes. The world is changing so quickly that every leader in any organization, I don’t care what industry it is or what geographic it is, if leaders aren’t flexible and shifting constantly, they will fail. We were talking about, before the call, that if there’s no movement, then that just equates to death, death of an individual, death of an organization. It’s almost like, leaders have to learn how to ride waves, to be surfers.

Jeanine: Exactly. But that’s what energy is, it is waves, it’s vibration and you need to learn how to ride it, exactly.

Shani: Yes, ride the waves. Something you said earlier, that you might have a dominant type, but everyone has all five types within them, and riding the wave is learning to access those non-dominant energy types when you need them in various leadership scenarios.

Jeanine: I would say stick to your own qualities, then see the other qualities and hire them or work together with them, because you need to see them and know how they work, but I wouldn’t advise to go and do that within your own profile. Stick to your upper two elements, then you will feel most in power, you can reach the top easily. It’s energy-costing when you go into the other elements too much. The only exception a little bit is water energy because it has everything. When I have this profile in percentages, I see water energy types have all the percentages up in the list, so water and wood will all close together, the other elements have two on top and the rest of them are a little bit lower. Water is much and many, so they have them all, they think they’re everything, they know everything, they do everything but your elements just get tired of doing them, or bored, or angry in wood cases or feeling lost for fire. [crosstalk]

Shani: Right. I try to see someone who’s in the wrong role because–

Jeanine: You’re not in your elements.

Shani: They’re not in their element, they’re not leveraging their strengths. It’s like their rowing upstream, I keep using these water analogies.

Jeanine: Losing energy, exactly.

Shani: Excellent. First, tell us how we can find you and access both the short free version of the energy type test and the longer version.

Jeanine: Yes. The longer version takes you about an hour, I offer these in my courses and in my retreats. I do online courses and I’m filming right now in English language because I do this in the Dutch language normally- before. There’s an online training and I also do retreats, so I take people to Spain and to the Sahara, in the sand, in the Sun, to teach them all about energy management, that’s where I offer those expensive tests. The short version is free and you can find it on my website, it’s my name, JeanineHofs.com/freetest, it takes you about two, three minutes and then you know your dominant energy type. That’s fun to do and you will know, “Oh, okay,” send me a message, I would love to hear if it’s true what you think or is different on what you thought, I’m curious about that [crosstalk]

Shani: If a company wants to hire you– I know you live in Europe but I’m assuming you’ll travel to the States or other places to work with companies.

Jeanine Hofs: Yes, I love traveling, so that’s one of the reasons I go outside of the Netherlands because Netherlands is too small for me. I like traveling and I travel wherever the fun is because that’s my drive fun, I always say bubbles was this, when I’m in good energy, real energy then I feel like champagne is bubbling. I have the best ideas, I’m most creative, I take the best decisions, I’m focused, I’m hyper-focused even. I can work eight hours straight, hyper-focused on something when I have bubbles, and traveling gives me bubbles, so then I travel. You can also do a lot of things through video calls, I coach most of my clients through video calls and it’s up to them whether they meet me live or on video call

Shani: Fine. I think it would be really amazing for us to do a retreat together one day, and bring all of our tools to companies.

Jeanine: Yes, that’s a good idea.

Shani: Yes. To come help shift your culture, you’re going to have to find me and I will loop Jeanine in. Thank you so much for joining us today. This was so much fun and Leadershifters, I think there are quite a few things for you to think about in the aftermath of this podcast. First of all, think about finding out what type you are using Jeanine’s free test, are you fire, earth, metal, wood or water? And then start to think about what type are the people on your team, do you have a predominance of one or two types, or do you have a well-balanced team? How do you hire? Are you hiring people that are more like you? Are you hiring a mix of people so that you’ve got an entire all five elements?

For those of you who are really stuck in using some of the other assessments, think about not replacing them, but supplementing them with trying to think about what energy types you and your team are, because this will help not only with shifting behaviors, but also help people manage their physical and emotional energy, and how people talk and relate to each other, which is so important in creating the right culture on your team. People can only feel psychologically safe if they feel seen and appreciated and understood. I feel like this identifying which of the five energy types people are on your team goes even deeper than some of the tools that I know I’ve used in the past and that many of you are using.

Jeanine: It also protects them from burnout and being ill. That’s an important thing in a company too but it costs you a lot of money when somebody is [crosstalk]

Shani: Oh my god, billions of dollars in health care across in burnout. Yes, so thank you for bringing this interesting perspective to the Leadership show today, Jeanine. Leadershifters, you know how to reach me. All of the various social media and [email protected]. Once again, Jeanine, give them your website.

Jeanine Hofs: Thank you, Shani, by the way, for introducing me, for asking me on this interview. I really liked our conversation and I hope I can help your guests, your listeners to get them more energy to master their energy. You can find me at Jeanine Hofs. We need to write it down somewhere, maybe in short notes.

Shani: J-E-A-N-I-N-E-H-O-F-S .com.

Jeanine Hofs:.com, yes. There you’ll find me. You’ll find me on social media. I share tips and videos and all good stuff. You can find the free test there as well. Jeaninehofs.com/freetest. Look me up and send me a message, I would love that.

Shani: Okay, thank you, Jeanine. Thank you Leadershifters for joining us today. Until next time.

The post 29: Creating a Culture of Energy Mastery with Jeanine Hofs appeared first on The LeaderShift Project.