The Hot Sauce Principle: How To Live And Lead In A World Where Everything Is Urgent All Of The Time with Author, TEDx Speaker, & CEO Brandon Smith on Episode #0223

Brandon Smith [0:00]
Brandon Smith, the WorkplaceTherapist.com and you’re listening to EA Interviews.

Intro [0:04]
EA interviews, Episode 223 inspiration, transformation success stories and the imperfect action round seven days a week. Join Mario Fachini for today’s Expert Authority Effect Interview.

Mario Fachini [0:17]
Do you feel like you’d want to slow down at times? Do you feel the world is too fast pace? I know I have. And I love talking about spending time with family and friends and what’s important. And that is why I’m beyond excited to have Brandon Smith, author of the Hot Sauce Principle, TEDx speaker, podcast host, communication and leadership expert. And we’re gonna be diving into this because the world is great. All this is fantastic. But wouldn’t you like to just connect, like for real, and not just be all you know, me, me and hit Instagram tagging and all this other stuff. So I’m gonna thank our sponsor and I’m going to bring up Brandon Smith.

Sponsor – Free Business Book Publishing Course [0:57]
Every business needs a book, including yours, visit FreeBusinessBook PublishingCourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that’s FreeBusinessBook PublishingCourse.com.

Mario Fachini [1:12]
Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Brandon Smith. Brandon, how are you feeling today?

Brandon Smith [1:16]
I’m doing great today.

Mario Fachini [1:20]
Why today over any other day?

Brandon Smith [1:24]
Well, first of all on your show, I mean, what more reason to be feeling great, I get to be on your show and talk about something I’m really passionate about. Also feeling good, because it’s end of Tuesday. And so we’re starting to move towards hump day. So that’s always, that’s always a good sign. We’re starting to head towards the end of the week. And I’ve just had a really good fulfilling week, this week had some really good calls with coaching clients today on a lot of the stuff we’re going to talk about today. So today, it’s been a really good day. Thank you for asking.

Mario Fachini [1:51]
I love hearing that because I don’t think there’s enough people that realize every day can be great if you choose to make it that way because of exactly just being busy. You know, like your book talks about why do you feel so many people are encapsulated with I got a just an if that made sense.

Brandon Smith [2:13]
Oh, man, so many reasons. So I would say naturally, you know, we’re in a world right now with pandemic and quarantine, that’s added a whole other flavor. But if we back up a little bit in time, you know, before even we experienced all this, my experience was all the all the organizations, all the leaders I was working with had two big factors going against them. First time was our most precious resource wasn’t money, it was time. And second, everything was urgent all the time. And so with those two forces, it kind of pushed them into firefighter mode. So they were waking up every day, constantly anxious, constantly just worrying with what was going to come at them. And so they were playing a lot more defense than offense, and they weren’t particularly playing it well. So it really inspired me to write the book to help people kind of manage that level of urgency and start to get in front of things a little bit.

Mario Fachini [3:06]
What percentage of the population do you think is just in overwhelm mode, the state of just being all pent up and everything, versus actually enjoying it? Because I know one of the things with CEOs and the entrepreneurs I talked to is it’s like, how many days a year can you take off? How effective can you be where it’s like, you don’t have to do all of it. and the flip side is, it’s I see other people and it seems like they think they’re gonna win a gold star, like if they sleep one hour a night instead of an actual night’s sleep. And it’s like, the more work they do.

Brandon Smith [3:42]
Yeah, what’s interesting, too, if I was to go that percentage, I’m gonna take a ballpark guess I would probably say you’re looking at a good of the working population. We can even take kids at another another conversation around this with the level of anxiety is increasing with kiddos. But at the working population, you’re probably looking at a ballpark figure of about 90% are dealing with this level of anxiety that’s heightened the percentage once you start to get to a c level, role or, or owner founder role. If you are able to you actually have some freedom to pull back a little bit. So you actually see stress when they’ve done studies around stress and anxiety, it starts to drop off at the senior levels, because you have a little more sense of control. But there aren’t too many of those seats. So it becomes a little more tricky.

Mario Fachini [4:29]
Now, do you think that’s just because of the delegation or, you know, devil’s advocate here, because it’s like, you might not have the day to day problems, but you definitely have a lot bigger and different problems.

Brandon Smith [4:42]
Mostly, it’s because you have a little more choice and it’s clear choice. So for most people in the working world, no matter what kind of what environment they work in, they’ve got if they’re just some a manager or leader in an organization, they got folks below them that need help and they’re pushing and need guidance. They also have folks to their left and right and they got folks above them. So they’re kind of in the middle of all that pressure, it’s a big pressure cooker. When you get to the top, you might have some folks to your left and right, but there’s nobody really above you. So the pressure is really coming from below. And so it’s only one direction not to say that’s not a big deal. Trust me, I work with a lot of leaders that, that they’ve got plenty of pressure on their plate, but a lot of it is more self imposed rather than from external forces.

Mario Fachini [5:25]
Oh, I want to take that deeper. I want to, I want to take that deeper before the next question. But why would you say it’s self imposed?

Brandon Smith [5:36]
Because what drives us to become successful is a lot of those that self talk and that story that we tell ourselves. So for example, I have a, I had a client earlier today, he’s the CEO of a private equity backed company. And we had this mini therapy session. So I’m a therapist by training, and now I apply it into the working world. And he said to me, just on his own, he said, you know, I’ve always had this underdog kind of idea in my mind this sell off self talk underdog stuff. So I love turning around businesses because you’re not there they’re broken and not supposed to be fixable. I love going in there and fixing it. But that underdog mentality is what kind of gets me every day up and fighting and this idea that I don’t I shouldn’t belong here. And it creates hunger and ambition for me. So he works crazy hours, not necessarily because he has to but because he’s got this story choice underdog and doesn’t belong and so he needs to he needs to keep up the pace.

Mario Fachini [6:29]
Okay, so it’s a good thing, but left unchecked, could go out of proportion.

Brandon Smith [6:35]
Yeah. So I’ll give you a great example. This was something a mentor of mine taught me years ago, a great question to ask if this is you listening to this right now or watching this? There’s nothing wrong with that kind of self talk. The real question is, what’s it costing you? That’s the big question. What’s the costing kind of a deep question, huh? I left that with my client today. I said just I said, Jared just kick this question around a little bit for the next couple weeks. What’s it costing you?

Mario Fachini [6:57]
Wow, that’s a great Expert Authority Insight. What is it costing you? It could be everything or it could just be a couple hours, huh?

Brandon Smith [7:07]
Well, he could he could just say a couple hours. Sure. Absolutely. Or he might say, guys, it’s really costing me time with my family. Or it’s costing me other relationships, or it’s costing me vacation or other things. There’s no right or wrong answer other than wrestle with the question.

Mario Fachini [7:25]
Wow. So take us through the hot, the Hot Sauce Principle because this is intriguing to me. And I’ll just let you take us through it.

Brandon Smith [7:36]
Yeah, so the title of my book is the Hot Sauce Principle how to live and lead in a world where everything is urgent all the time and analogies. Pretty simple. It’s urgencies like hot sauce, and why I love that analogy is because hot sauce is a great thing. You put a little bit of hot sauce on things, adds a little focus of a flavor with a spice, right? Oh, wow. It’s, it’s good, you know, maybe needs a little bit of relief and drink of water, okay. But if we cover every single thing we have in hot sauce, and just douse it and everything that comes out of our kitchen is Dalston hot sauce or comes that comes out of the leadership kitchen to us. So the appetizers covered in hot sauce, the salad, the entree, the brownie at the end, the iced tea, you know, we’re curled up in a ball overwhelmed. And so I love the analogy because a little bit of hot sauce, adds priority and focus. But if we make everything urgent all the time, or we live in a world where everything’s urgent all the time, the exact opposite happens. It creates paralysis, and, and urgency and hot sauce. Another word for that would be anxiety. So we want to be careful that we’re not putting so much on our plate and in our lives that you know we’re suffering from extreme anxiety because that’s definitely been an issue and a growing issue, particularly as we’re in a world where we’re a little more isolated and quarantine for the moment.

Mario Fachini [8:59]
Let’s talk about what this does to the business over time. So I love the analogy too when you said putting it over a brownie I was like, but I know some people who love it. They’re like, oh, I put hot sauce on everything. It also reminded me of the one episode of the office where Michael was they were like, you can’t keep doing this. He’s like what you can still tell the differentiation. He’s like I market urgent a, urgent b, urgent c, urgent. You know, everything’s urgent to your point.

Brandon Smith [9:33]
Yeah.

Mario Fachini [9:34]
What does this do to a business over time if everything is literally covered in hot sauce.

Brandon Smith [9:42]
So if we extend this a little bit further, it creates a tremendous amount of chaos is what it really does, it creates chaos, so nothing has ever really done well. And it creates a lot of fits and starts. So from a business execution standpoint, it’s just this choppy. Nothing ever really gets fully accomplished. Lots of starting things, not finishing things, a lot of collision of resources, you don’t manage resources, well, you can allocate resources to certain initiatives because what initiatives we allocate them to all initiatives are important so you can’t really there’s no way to make trade offs. And what you also end up doing is it will, it will ultimately result for fact, in a loss of talent, because you’ll have people burned out and so they’re going to leave. So then now we’re replacing people are experienced with people with new people. And that can be bad for customer retention, client retention could be bad just for general execution. So in simple terms of the companies that I see that really do this, the best, the majors the best, particularly even the last six months, they execute off of three to five priorities. That’s it, they’ve got three to five priorities.

Mario Fachini [10:47]
Do you see any commonalities with those three to five priorities or just the fact that it’s only three to five priorities.

Brandon Smith [10:56]
So well, I see that they tend to, they tend to have three to five big priorities that they focus on, and they just keep repeating those, at least the senior leader does, this is the stuff that matters the most. And then then the challenge is all the leaders within the organization have to kind of line up to those. Because there can be the tendency for those individual leaders to create sub priorities that are their version of hot sauce. So then you have, you know, big bottles and small bottles floating around all over the place.

Mario Fachini [11:23]
But do you see any? As far as the topics of like, for example, sales? Is sales commonly always one of those top three or is it weekly meetings and team building?

Brandon Smith [11:37]
Well, it should, at least in my opinion, should depend upon the needs of the business. Okay, so right now, as we sit here today, yeah, revenue protection and profitability is a big topic, particularly client relationships. So, oh, that tends to be one of the big priorities is how do we really reconnect with our clients partner with our clients understand where our clients are at and make sure that we’re, we’re meeting them where they’re at right now because everybody’s in their own place right now. So that’s definitely one. Cost control tends to be one to be honest with you, I’m not a very big fan of that one. Because that one to me, I think, is a pretty easy one. And, and it tends to get overweighted, which then cuts into things like clients and marketing and sales and a lot of those other lifeblood pieces of the priority. So I would, I would say this, a good mix of priorities should look like the inside of a car, there should be a combination of gas pedal priorities and brake pedal priorities because too many gas pedals seems to be fun ride, but you’ll come off the cliff, any brake pedal priorities like cost control, we’re never going to leave the parking spot, we’re just gonna stay parked because it’s much safer that way. So the priority mix should probably be something that represents gas pedals and brake pedals.

Mario Fachini [12:52]
Depending on the business. Okay. I didn’t know if there was some magic bullet inside of the magic bullet of that, you know, you got the three priorities three to five, but, you know, sales as you see it an 80% of cases. But it makes sense, because, you know, maybe someone’s great with lead gen sales and closing. And their teams a massive, company B might have a great team and synergy. They all hate selling as also problematic, you know, maybe both of those are good, like you’re saying, but you’re doing cost overruns and small margins. And, you know, maybe you got great margins, but not enough volume.

Brandon Smith [13:31]
Yeah, most of what I see now is at least today, revenue, present preservation, revenue stream preservation. So it’s, how do we maintain this? And what can be ways we can secure it going forward? And what do we need to do to make that happen?

Mario Fachini [13:45]
Okay. Well, I want to kick it back for a second, because I want to know how you got into this. It’s obviously it’s obvious, you’re helping people and you’re doing a fantastic job. So congrats on that, but what inspired you to even get started with it?

Brandon Smith [14:02]
Yeah, so I’m gonna go way back in time. I’ll tell you kind of the mini mini story around this. So I was the youngest of three boys. I have two older brothers. Both were adopted. And so being the youngest of the three boys, I always tell people, I know what the inside of a dryer looks like because that was what’s like to be a little brother. Oh, my oldest brother Chris, he was in and out of jail rehab centers for most of my life growing up, so there was a lot of kind of dysfunction in my house. And then when I was 10, he took his own life. And that was a particularly dramatic experience for me so much so that about after six months after that period of time, when he did that, I came up with an uncontrollable stutter. So I couldn’t I couldn’t speak in public at all. So every day before and this was going into middle school, so every day before school, I would go and see my speech therapist and work on my Bs, my Ts and my Ps, all the letters that I couldn’t, couldn’t get out. And that go into the school day well between my brothers kind of issues and the dysfunction of my house and then my speech impediment, I just decided people were way too dysfunctional, way too messy. I didn’t want anything to do with them. So I became kind of a world class wallflower. And that continued all the way through high school into college. I didn’t really know what I wanted to major in. In college, I ended up settling on communications, ironically enough. And like basca communication majors, I was unemployed at graduation, wondering what am I going to do with this thing. And I got a job with a small chain of retail stores. I was it was a family owned business. And I was going to be the assistant manager at one of the stores, they had about 15 stores. So my boss was a son in law of the owner. So the woman who started the business, her daughter marries this guy, he’s my boss, okay, so he greets me at the door of the store where I’m going to work on the my first day of work. And I’ve worked other jobs, but this is my first full time job. And he said, alright, I’m so glad you’re here but before you get started, I have a task for you, waiting for you in the back room is the current Assistant Manager. But yes, I know you’re coming. So your job is to go back there and fire him and you get his job. And that was that was why I did on my first day work. first task, I had to go let the guy go that I was taking his job. And that was how my boss rolled he loved he loved to do everything you’re not supposed to do as a leader. So he was a great example of what not to do. He loves surprise visits to try and catch you doing something wrong. So he burst into the story needs to go to the back room. He said, hey, I don’t like what Janet’s wearing up front, go fire her, I do more layoffs in that first six months of that job than any other time in my career since then. And that experience had me really have three realizations in my life. First, it made me realize work should not have to suck. It should be a source of fulfillment, and meaning and purpose for all of us not a source of anxiety and stress and pain. I mean, it is work. But you know, it should be more of those positive things, not necessarily those negative things. Second, if my boss was any indication on the state of leadership in the world today, I want to fix that. And third, that was where my purpose was born, that I wanted to fix and eliminate all workplace dysfunction, everywhere, forever, having no idea what I’d signed up for. So that was that that was what really got me on the journey, I went off and pursued a clinical therapy degree to develop my coaching skills. This is before coaching certificates existed. And then I worked in the clinical world, transitioning to the corporate world for a number of years, went back and got my MBA and then the rest is history. So it was all started with having a really bad boss in the beginning to kind of let that let that fire underneath me.

Mario Fachini [17:32]
I gotta ask you what you got to tell us about that. I mean, it’s impressive overall. But what did how did that go down the date? So he told you, you have to fire them. You went back there was that just like a casual conversation? Did it escalate? Tell me about that.

Brandon Smith [17:50]
You know, I should there should have been warning lights that went off for me right out of the gate. Because when I went back there and had the conversation, it was no surprise to the guy. He was like, yeah, I figured something like this. Like he wasn’t surprised. He would think that would be pretty surprising. He just took it. He was like yeah, I was like I’m really sorry. I you know, it’s not nothing personal. I just this apparently I now got your job. He’s like yeah , yeah no and he just walked out.

Mario Fachini [18:15]
Like zero protest. Not even This is unfair. This sucks or…

Brandon Smith [18:20]
Three minutes.

Mario Fachini [18:22]
Wow.

Brandon Smith [18:23]
Picked up the stuff walked out. That was it. Which should have told me like, this guy was not surprised by this action.

Mario Fachini [18:30]
I mean, later, that was why and if you weren’t surprised. Why would you just be like, yeah, I anticipate. I mean, did you even a little protest for five or 10 minutes like it’s wow, I I had no ide but I was just like, that’s cat. I had everything running through my mind from this could go smooth. I didn’t think it would be that easy. Truthfully, that wasn’t even on the radar. But I was also like, this could also be like what you see in movies where it just turns into this giant, massive, you know, I’m glad no one got hurt. But.

Brandon Smith [19:03]
Well believe me I had a lot of those other conversations where it was a surprise. You know, he would say I don’t like what Janet’s wearing upfront. Go let her go. And then those were big surprises because yeah, but but the guy who was working more closely with with my boss, I think knew him a little bit better and wasn’t too surprised that this was

Mario Fachini [19:21]
So let’s expand on this because clearly you run the gamut on I’m sure you could go all day on the stories but someone’s facing this in their business right now. How do you handle if Janet’s wearing the wrong thing and you have to go fire her and that does explode versus this guy who is still a shock to me why he just be like yeah, no problem. I’m out of here. How do you how do you handle these situations and have good workplace dynamic without it turning into something where you’re legit joking aside fearing for your life or the employees, the staff this that the other thing or just having a huge impact on business because the reality is, you know, I’ve let people go and I’ve hired people. And sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn’t. But it plays a role whether it’s mentally, emotionally or it could be physically.

Brandon Smith [20:14]
So let’s let’s back up a little bit. Let’s talk about healthy. Let’s talk about how you have healthy conversations and healthy dynamics at work. So, I’m a big believer that the first job of any leader for her or him is to drive clarity, clarity on roles, clarity on goals, clarity on expectations, clarity. And when you do that, really well you’re you know, you’re you’re setting up what you’re expecting from people. And it makes it a lot easier when you have to have feedback conversations. Okay, so if I haven’t told Janet, what I expect in terms of attire, it’s gonna be a real shocker. If I show up and say, by the way, you guessed wrong today, you’re fired.

Mario Fachini [20:51]
And you’re talking on the job, the hiring process, so you let them know right out of the gate, here’s the dress code. Here’s the time code, here’s the eating code. here’s, here’s the setting expectations.

Brandon Smith [21:02]
I’ll be even more broad, the first job of any leader is to drive clarity. You cannot give accountability, hold people accountable or give feedback if you haven’t made it clear what you expect first.

Mario Fachini [21:12]
Okay,

Brandon Smith [21:12]
Then they’re gonna get really angry. And because you essentially are evaluating them on their guessing skills.

Mario Fachini [21:19]
So it’s not even the timing of when you do it. It’s Did you do it or not?

Brandon Smith [21:25]
Yeah, yes, exactly. If you if you haven’t driven clarity, you’re evaluating them on on their guessing skills, my daughter is sick, she would make me play guessing games, whether or not she’s 18, but she would always say, oh, dad, I’m sorry, you failed, you got a c minus in guessing. Well, we don’t want to be scoring people on their guessing skills. That’s not that’s not healthy, dynamic. So it’s really important that we drive clarity first. So in this case, when there was issues when people got upset it was because it wasn’t made clear what was expected. If you make it clear to what what you expect, 80% of your folks will step up to that. And then your coaching conversations are only 20%. But if you don’t make it clear, you’re just playing Las Vegas management. You’re just letting people guess and gamble. And the ones who guessed right and gamble right they win. And the ones who guessed wrong lose. A long time. Perfect out. So best gifts any manager can do is provide that level of clarity.

Mario Fachini [22:18]
Here, you got incredible insights. And some of the best analogies be. I’m the car the hot sauce, the Vegas. This is awesome. So let’s talk about the people you’ve been able to help with this what who’ss been your biggest transformational success story.

Brandon Smith [22:36]
So I’m going to give you kind of two as examples. So one would be a luxury retailer that for free. What was a luxury retail I worked with a couple years ago. And when I get to do my very best work. So let me wave my magic wand and I get to do my best work. It tends to involve a couple different things. I’m doing individual coaching with leaders across the business. So I’m working with lots of folks one on one, I’m doing teamwork. So I’m doing work with teams. And then I’m also getting to jump in there and doing a little bit of executive education. I get to do a little bit of teaching and you know, communicate principles and concepts. So everybody’s getting the same language. When I get to do all three of those, I could change the culture. And so this was a luxury retailer. This was when ecommerce was really disrupting their business and they said, you know, we need to go from a clerking culture to a client telling culture, which I love that image, clerking, declined, tell me more clerking, we’re standing back on our heels saying how can I help you? But or clienteling were saying, oh, my gosh, Mario, you look greatness. I mean, we’re really being proactive. So they need to change that. And they were so successful in the year that I worked with them. It wasn’t just my doing, I supported it. But then they ended up getting acquired. So that was a really good happy story for them. So that was a that was a great one. And then one that I’ve really enjoyed recently is I’ve been able to take a lot of the work that I would normally do in person, and figure out ways to do it virtually. So I’ve been having a great opportunity to do more of that kind of work, virtual work, same kind of thing. But I’m doing it all virtually so we’ve all had to pivot. And I had the opportunity to work with a department, so an r&d department and inside a medical device company, and they were the lowest unemploy engagement score. And after the work we did over four months, they bumped to the top of the list on employee engagement score, and saw tremendous improvement in how they collaborated across the business. So that’s a mini example, but a more relevant one. So it’s both of those have been kind of fun, happy stories for me.

Mario Fachini [24:35]
So tell me about the book with all the success you’ve had, you know, with the speaking in the coaching, why did you decide you wanted to do a book?

Brandon Smith [24:47]
You know, there’s a couple of reasons. One, I always wanted to find a way to take a lot of the content that I was producing and creating and putting it into something a little more just tangible that people could hold on to and habit at their disposal. So there was that reason for it. But the other reason was from a business perspective. You know, there’s a lot of things I’ve gotten to accomplish, but I’ve never written a book. And that was I think, as establishing yourself as an expert. It’s still one of those important pieces to stay, there’s in the cap that you have to have. And I found that to be very true for me. I didn’t have to have it to continue to run my business. But to really position me for some of the other work that I wanted to do, it was important to have one. And so I’m really glad I wrote it. It was a great experience. And I’m already planning on my next one.

Mario Fachini [25:35]
Who the next one, what’s, what’s that gonna be about?

Brandon Smith [25:39]
Oh, I can’t I can’t tell you that. It’s like, it’s like going into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. There’s some secrets

Mario Fachini [25:44]
That I know, I had to try those. I have done it. And I actually got some people to reveal some stuff that their own staff didn’t know I got an email and they were like, how did you get her to tell us? We didn’t even know. So I had to go for it. But I’m sure it’ll be great also, but I can respect that. We’re going to do I kind of asked you one, but we’re going to do the Wheel of Whatever. Before we thank our sponsor. And this is a question. That is always fun. So I’m going to spin this and see what it lands on for you. Oh, that’s that’s doing good. Last time, I almost dropped the thing.

Brandon Smith [26:28]
Wheel of Whatever.

Mario Fachini [26:32]
My question for you as? What business would you love to be able to work with that you haven’t yet? Like a well known one that you maybe not even think you could get access to that you know, you could help them? They definitely need it?

Brandon Smith [26:53]
Oh, wow, that’s a really great question. Oh, I love that question. You know, I will, I will answer it. Alright, it’s hard for me to pick but I’m going to go ahead and pick one. I love, love, love, love and got a chance to work with them a little bit. But I love Love, love hospitality. So I would love to work with either Marriott or Hilton, or a large hospitality company because I know, right now they’re definitely struggling. But my heart really goes out to companies that have strong service models, where service is a really big part of their revenue and how they end building those customer relationships over time. And, and the importance of culture in that. So I would love to spend more time with them. Now, if I had a real wish list company, even within that space, yeah, go for it. And Hilton, there’ll be one, there’ll be one that sticks the top of the list. If you look behind me, pricey hints of it. Disney World, I would love to work with Disney, particularly the park side of the business for that, for all those same reasons. Because I think what they when they do it well, they create a lot of loyalty and that makes their business run really, really well. And it can weather most storms. But pandemics are a little more challenging.

Mario Fachini [28:12]
I’m thinking of if I know anyone that has ties to Disney, because that would be a fun. I’d be happy to make that introduction. If anyone ever comes on the show. I think that would be great too. Because I know you could help them.

Brandon Smith [28:28]
I would owe you big time I would owe you so big. So big.

Mario Fachini [28:35]
How long have you like Disney for?

Brandon Smith [28:39]
Oh gosh, probably since I was four or five. I always just loved what it stood for and what it what it felt like to be in there and how everybody just kind of operated a little bit differently. Even the customers, I find that really fascinating. Now as I’ve gotten older, I you know, look at how the cast members work and how they just generally create environments where people just tend to be nicer to each other. So in that way, at least, at least when I’m there, it feels like the happiest place on earth. So I think that’s pretty cool.

Mario Fachini [29:10]
You know one of the most fascinating things I remember about it is I’ve always liked Disney also, just from a personal standpoint, like again, they’re nice, upbeat, positive, this and that, but also from the business standpoint and I’ve watched some movies on wall and I do I love documentaries and just learning business in general. But one of the things that eat long before the show and probably even my companies was just I’ve always been fascinated with like how people think and the behind the scenes and stuff and I will never forget. Well, I did I did forget whether it was a documentary on TV or book or whatever, probably TV because I’m drawn to video shocking but they were talking about how they engineered the park. And a lot of people don’t know this, but there’s actually tunnels under it, because when they’re taking the trash out or moving people around this and that, like some of the simplest things we take for granted, when you’re doing stuff at scale, it’s just a whole different ballgame. And I was just fascinated, because it’s like all these little things that aren’t a big deal for us. It’s like when you’re moving 100,000 or a million, probably millions of people daily, I go come to think of it. I never did see any of the staff interfering with our experience. You know, when did you ever see the people getting dressed, walking out into the area? You didn’t? How did they get from one side of the park to the other in that you have to have your brain that just, you have to be tuned into excellence in what you’re speaking about that top level, it’s like, was that even on anyone’s radar? You know, they didn’t just build the whole thing. And then realize we have a problem, tear it down and do it again. Did you, did you happen to know about that or not?

Brandon Smith [31:00]
Yeah, the story though, as the story goes, What drove Walt Disney crazy because in Disneyland, he was so bothered by seeing a cowboy walking through Tomorrow Land. So when they bought all that property in Florida, it was designed so it was on the second floor. So a cowboy would just kind of pop out of the bushes in Frontier Land. And there was no walking through other parts of the park. So everybody kind of stayed in character, and all the cast members stayed where they were supposed to stay. So it’s really, really interesting. And, and they have from talking to people who have worked there they said, it’s one of the safest places on earth, they monitor everything. So it’s, it’s, we could spend a whole show on just Disney my friend.

Mario Fachini [31:44]
Yeah, and I love that you’re speaking on the communications and excellence in the leadership because even recently, I mean, I’ll bring up a recent I’m not gonna name the chain or whatever, where I was doing or anything, but I was looking for a building, the GPS wasn’t working. And I literally, I kicked it back old school, for anyone that thinks that your phone is only for internet, it does still make calls. So I did what we used to do back in the day and made a phone call to the place I was looking to get to. And I was just shocked because they said the person who answered she goes, I said, Are you north of 19? You know, the Mile Road. And she goes I don’t know North, East, South and West. She goes we’re over by the Walgreens in the pet store. And I’m like, how did you function to get to this point in your life where you didn’t learn a basic? You know what I mean, customer service now is just in so many instances, just not fantastic. And to hear stories, you know, like we’re talking about Disneyland it’s like the vision and the mind you had to have 70 years ago, 80 years ago and now it’s like, you would think we’d advanced through it. But clearly not because you’ve got a ton of clients. And, you know, clearly people still can get it right.

Brandon Smith [33:08]
Well, I think you make a really important trend point that is for all businesses today, There’s such a push to make business transactional. And there’s a dismissal of relational businesses and that importance of that connection with people. But I have a feeling since we are actually people. And we’d like to deal with people that that’s going to kick back the other way at some point. But probably not until the pendulum has already kind of swung so far. So there’s just such a desire to make things like Amazon, where just shows up your door. But we still like people interaction. And that’s why I have such a heart for things like hospitality.

Mario Fachini [33:48]
I think it’s great from an opportunity standpoint, because, you know, it gives us the opportunity to help more people because some people just literally aren’t thinking about it. And that’s fine. But if you’ve heard of it and read a book or just had some common sense, and it’s like, hey, I want to be treated how I should treat people how I want to be treated, incorporated in your business, you’re not going to be it’s your business, you can do whatever you want. Yeah, but so many people, it seems like they just don’t care.

Brandon Smith [34:18]
And I’ll put it in another language that I think a lot of your listeners and viewers will relate to. When we treat our clients transactionally and we have that relationship they call us a vendor, we treat them relationally and we build that relationship they call us a partner.

Mario Fachini [34:34]
Yes.

Brandon Smith [34:35]
I don’t know about you, but I would rather be a partner because partner that means we’re gonna walk with him for five or 10 years. And it just means they’ll put us out to bid the next time they have cost issues. So I think strategically there’s real value in being a partner and building those relationships.

Mario Fachini [34:52]
I agree. 100% and I can say over the last 5, 6, 7 years. I never treated my staff and team as like, you work for me or an employee or rent rent, right? You’re just like, you’re just kind of there. But I did start saying, because I’ve always had that mentality, but I have literally posted when I’m looking for people. Like, as the show grew, you know, I’m always looking for great people to join the EA Interviews team, I’ll put in the post I go, this is not a one time deal or project basis, I’m looking to partner with someone, majority of my clients team and people have been with me, you know, and I even put, I’m looking, for example, I was looking for a lead programmer for CSS, PHP and stuff are one of the software’s I developed. And I put in the post, my lead programmer has been with me for over eight years, I really don’t want to have to look again next year. And I, you know, I’m looking to partner, I’m not looking for someone on a project basis. And the people who responded, I had a little thing that said, you know, what drew you to this. I mean, coding is nothing new. And they go, I’m so tired of just dealing with companies that just toss us, I, you know, we’re looking to have a long term relationship also.

Brandon Smith [36:12]
Yeah, and I bet that’s your ideal client that you work with is longer term relationships like that, too. So your, your internal culture, you know, matches your business model, which is why this stuff also matters, too.

Mario Fachini [36:25]
Yeah, I mean, well, I’m so glad you’re sharing it because when you embody it, it just comes out in everything. There’s times what people ask stuff and it’s like, I, it’s just so ingrained in me. It’s not like, let’s talk about the vision and mission real quick, because this is a thing, I was gonna make a joke and say, it’s not just a bullet point on the vision list, or whatever. But what’s your take on those? Do you think most people get these right? The core values, the mission statement, and all that stuff where people.

Brandon Smith [36:59]
No, they don’t get them right.

Mario Fachini [37:01]
Do you think they do it to look good?

Brandon Smith [37:04]
They they do it they they do two things wrong. So this for everyone who does these, this is how you screw this up. First, you go off with the senior leadership team. And you create these over a full day and you say, look at what we did these stick them up on behind Plexiglas you never talk about them again. So that’s the first way people screw them up is you do them, you treat them like a one time event and not something you’re going to talk about every day. Because they really are supposed to be things you talk about every day. The second way people screw them up is the more subtle way, they create too many. There’s too many, the statements are too long, they’ve got too many, so no one can remember them. Because to really have these effective, there has to be sticky. So let’s go back to Magic Kingdom in Disney World for a minute. If you and I worked at Magic Kingdom as cast members, we’d be trained on four values to be only four values that they would train us on safety, courtesy, show and efficiency that’s it. And we would be training that that’s the right priority. We keep our guests safe. We give them magical moments, which is courtesy, we create great show experiences, which are like memorable lifetime experiences. And super efficient because no one wants to stay into the hot Florida sun in the middle of July. And we’d be trained on those for now, how many companies have you gone into that have eight or 12 value statements or purpose statements, people can’t remember them. And that’s that’s not me saying that. Those are psychology studies that have been done over decades, that show that most people after you get past about five things they forget. So even a cognitive psychology proves this point. So if you’re really wanting to do this, right, you know, think about things you want to talk about every day and keep it simple, fewer the items, the better. That’s how you really make culture work.

Mario Fachini [38:47]
Excellent. Those are great expert authority insights. And I was thinking, there’s, there’s times I’ve done the exercise, and it’s like, well, I want to do six or seven. And it’s like, No, well, maybe there is eight, nine or 10. It’s like bundle them rename them. But keep it simple because you don’t want to be you don’t need to impress people by doing you know more than the other person just be uncommonly good at the simple stuff most people take don’t do. Do those, you know those three things exceptionally well, you don’t need 15 of them.

Brandon Smith [39:18]
Yeah, and here’s makes us even simpler. Remember, we went back to priorities. Earlier today, we talked about priorities and three to five. The companies with the culture values three to five, it’s the same rule. Just keep three to five, three to five main values for your culture, three to five main priorities you’re going to execute on because people can remember those and it keeps people focused and aligned. And as leaders that’s really what we’re trying to do. That’s our job. We got a herd all the cats.

Mario Fachini [39:44]
I have told my author clients the same thing when I’m helping them publish their books. You know, this the title, subtitle and then the bullet points for like, what, what are you going to discuss in the chapter, put three of them in there. So you have a few points that get some benefit. It’s all well and good, but there’s not you don’t have one chapter that’s 27 pages long and one that’s two.

Brandon Smith [40:06]
Yeah. Nice.

Mario Fachini [40:07]
Keep it simple. We’re gonna thank the sponsor and come back for the Imperfect Action Round.

Sponsor – Free Business Book Publishing Course [40:13]
You’ve heard me say every business needs a book, including yours. And it’s true. And that’s why you should visit FreeBusinessBookPublishingCourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what, don’t take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lorie “and I went from having an idea. And the possibilities to actually getting my book published”, or Katherine, “thank you for making my mom number one bestselling author” .Or Maryalice, “What he got done for me in three days regarding my book launch, unimaginable.” Jon Cody, “I’ve worked with Mario over the phone and online and he’s been very helpful in getting me where I needed to go with promoting my books.” Rosio, “There’s no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else. Again, I’ve attempted it in the past, it didn’t serve me. As a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process.” Adele, “If you’re looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Fachini.” Or Bill Benner, “I can’t make a higher recommendation for them to work with Mario Fachini. He has been great for for me And right now, I won’t work with anybody else except for Mary Kay their words, not mine. Visit FreeBusinessBookPublishingCourse.com to get started now, and I look forward to hearing your transformation as the next video success story. Once again, that’s FreeBusinessBookPublishingCourse.com

Mario Fachini [41:44]
And we are back with the Imperfect Action around Brandon, are you ready to take Imperfect Action?

Brandon Smith [41:50]
I’m ready.

Mario Fachini [41:52]
These are rapid fire questions and the answers. The first one I have for you is what is the fastest path to the profits?

Brandon Smith [42:02]
Sitting down with your customers and talking about what are their goals and needs and being flexible enough to meet those needs. Today that’s really, really important. Trying to put them into a box that existed six months ago, isn’t gonna work anymore. But customers are really open to still meeting their needs today. So if people are willing to be flexible and creative, that’s the path.

Mario Fachini [42:24]
Excellent. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

Brandon Smith [42:32]
The biggest problem I see them making particularly at the leadership level, the leaders that I work with, is that because they make everything urgent all the time, and they’re defaulting to doing other people’s jobs for them they find themselves more as firefighters than anything else. And so the easiest way to fix this, if you’re a leader is to think about your hourly rate and make sure that you’re using your hourly rate to determine what’s the best use of your time. And what are the things you either need to be saying no to delegating or outsourcing.

Mario Fachini [43:07]
Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Brandon Smith [43:14]
Oh, I think we’ve talked about this before, I think you want to match your culture, the culture of your business, and how you provide service to the culture of your clients. So what do they value and then experience and make sure that you’re operating that way to align? Because when your culture is lined up with their culture, that’s a marriage made in heaven. And that’s gonna last a long time. And that creates ongoing revenue streams, which is what we all like.

Mario Fachini [43:42]
Absolutely. Well, thank you for those. What are some books you could recommend expert authority world that have made a big impact on your life?

Brandon Smith [43:50]
Well, in addition, in addition to my own, which I would highly recommend people buy and read. I have a couple I would, I do like Daring Greatly from Brené Brown. I like particularly her work around vulnerability I think there’s a lot of power in that. And anything by Paulo Coelho is very, very good so I recommend his his work as well. And then when I’m thinking about other books, I like to read anything Malcolm Gladwell is just just more stimulating for me. So that’s more just entertaining, but also insightful. But I would kind of start with some of those big ones.

Mario Fachini [44:23]
Excellent, great recommendations there. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this, and I appreciate you for sharing.

Brandon Smith [44:30]
Yeah, I have to thank you for having me on the show.

Mario Fachini [44:33]
The pleasure is mine and Expert Authority World. We have another great episode here today. I’ll see you tomorrow. Have a great day. And God bless.

Sponsor – Free Business Book Publishing Course [44:45]
You’re already the expert. But have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate and qualified leads while increasing profit for you? 24 seven, and if so, how well are you promoting it with the expert authority effect publishing Method it’s easier and faster than ever. Visit FreeBusinessBookPublishingCourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit FreeBusinessBookPublishingCourse.com to get started now, once again, that’s FreeBusinessBookPublishingCourse.com.

www.EAInterviews.com [45:19]
Hey, thanks for listening to today’s episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven’t done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show. And also be sure to check out EAInterviews.com for complete shownotes the full interview video experience links to the resources we mentioned and more. Have a blessed day and I’ll see you tomorrow.