Episode 340: Leadership Potential: Building Trust and Achieving Team Flow
Drew Sutton, a CEO mindset and leadership coach, joins Bob Woods on the Making Sales Social podcast. Discover how Drew’s engineering background and extroverted personality influence his approach to leadership and business coaching. He discusses concepts like selling value at a discount, achieving team flow akin to professional athletes, and the significance of culture scripting in shaping organizational culture. Learn about the nuances of fostering connections through local networking events and the impact of John Maxwell’s philosophy on Drew’s leadership style. Tune in for insights on unlocking team potential and effective leadership strategies.
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Intro
0:00:18 – (Bob Woods): Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman, and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests teach their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. This episode of the Making Sales Social podcast is brought to you by Social Sales Link, the company that helps you start more trust-based conversations without being salesy through the power of LinkedIn and AI. Start your journey for free by joining our resource library. Welcome to the show.
0:00:30 – (Bob Woods): Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing and business. Join Brynne Tillman and me, Bob woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests are teaching their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. Enjoy the show. My guest today is Drew Sutton of Drew Sutton Leadership. Drew is a CEO mindset coach, a John Maxwell certified coach, and a 32 time inventor, which is amazing. I don’t know if I’ve had 32 completely different ideas to invent on in a decade, much less actually invent things. So that’s just amazing.
0:01:19 – (Bob Woods): Drew helps corporate teams get unstuck and back to building an exciting future. He helps teams map and understand the complex challenges that surround both them and their customers. And then he helps them with custom solutions from proven systems so they can get back to work building tomorrow in the future, like that type of thing. Drew also has his own LinkedIn Live show called the Drew Sutton Leadership show where he speaks with leaders in all different types of businesses.
0:01:50 – (Bob Woods): I was on a show last week. It really is a thrill ride. It’s very entertaining. I had a lot of fun doing it. I’m sure anyone and everyone who listens to it has fun while they are listening to it. At the same time though, there’s a lot of knowledge and value that is delivered as well. So it’s definitely in that edutainment type of thing that I love and that a lot of people just love because people don’t want to be just know taught and preach dad. They, they want to have fun while they’re doing it too. And, and the show really captures all of that.
0:02:21 – (Bob Woods): So as you can probably imagine, Drew is also a speaker, he’s a Phil, facilitator, angel investor, and probably a lot of other things that I’m not even thinking of right now. An added bonus for me personally, Drew is located in the Lexington, Kentucky area. That’s where I’m at as well. Woohoo. Represent, represent bbn. Go cats. So I see him out and about all the time. In fact, we saw each other Just last night. And we’re going to talk about that during the show because, because there’s something there as well.
0:02:52 – (Bob Woods): I’m excited to deep dive into his journey and hear his insights on leadership, operations and much more. So let’s get things rolling. Drew Sutton, welcome to Making Sales Social.
0:03:03 – (Drew Sutton): Thanks, Bob. I’m excited to be here, man.
0:03:06 – (Bob Woods): I’m very excited to have you here. This is going to be great. So our first traditional question to everyone on the show here always is, what does Making Sales Social mean to you?
0:03:19 – (Drew Sutton): Yeah, this is. I love this question. I think this is probably why you and I connect so well. I am an engineer by training, which the old joke goes, the difference between an introverted engineer and an extroverted engineer is that the extroverted engineer looks at other people’s shoes. Like we just walk around. Got him. Good, good.
0:03:42 – (Bob Woods): Oh, that’s funny.
0:03:44 – (Drew Sutton): So I’m kind of a unique animal in my, in my sphere of training. I’m, I’m a hyper extrovert and. But I hate sales. So my wife’s an accountant. My daughter’s taking an accounting class at BCTC right now. And she came home, she goes, dad, accounting is, is pretty straightforward. Like, you have to do a lot of work, but you’re just balancing the accounts. And for me, as an engineer, I was like, yeah, that’s basically what engineering is. We’re just balancing forces and internal forces and energy flow. But we’re, we’re essentially accountants. We’re just, we just have fancy levers for that.
0:04:18 – (Drew Sutton): And when it comes to sales and business, we’re all trying to do what I call selling value at a discount. We’re selling value at a discount. So if you think about like, my. One of my boys is in high school as well. He just bought himself some Air Force One Nikes. He’s very, very excited about these Air Force ones. He spent his lawn mowing money on it. Right? Now, the shoes weren’t the thing when I was in school, but for him that’s what you know. So if you think about the Air Force ones, they’re like 150 shoe. But he got them for 120, so the value is 150. He received them for 120. That is value at a discount. Right? And that’s our job as, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, is to be really good at our craft so that we can sell value at a discount.
0:05:03 – (Drew Sutton): But you have. So in sales, you’re either raising the perceived value of something or you’re explaining how I’m giving it to you at a discount. So a lot of sales is really me seeing you in a predatory fashion. And I’m going to interrupt what you’re doing on Facebook. I’m going to interrupt you doing on a media platform. I’m going to grab a hold of you and then try to convince you to buy from me. I don’t. None of us like that. I don’t like it. You don’t like it. I mean, I get calls all day long.
0:05:33 – (Drew Sutton): One of my favorites I just got this week. They said, hey, I’m calling you back because you sent me a request to ask about getting a government grant to change out your windows for new windows. I did. Not on any level. So while I appreciate the gamesmanship on their side, that’s not sales. And I’m in a business of trust. Leadership consulting is up there with CPAs and doctors and lawyers. And I want to live in a world in which when you have a need, you think of me, and then you know that you’re getting value at a discount. And that’s social selling. We’re building a relationship.
0:06:10 – (Drew Sutton): I have another friend that’s in sales, and he calls it. There’s hunters, which is what most sales. The pe. The sales folks that we generally don’t like, they’re hunters. And there’s farmers. Yep. And social selling is farming. We’re planting seeds. We’re nurturing the seeds. And when it’s right, and it doesn’t have to be right for everybody, but when it’s right, you’re in a business, you’re stuck, you’re frustrated. You haven’t taken a vacation for two years. You’re having employee problems.
0:06:33 – (Drew Sutton): I want you to be like, you know what? I can trust Drew to help me with that one. That’s social selling to me.
0:06:41 – (Bob Woods): 100%. Could definitely, definitely love that explanation. So let’s talk a little bit more about what it is that you do now. Can you tell us more about the specific groups or types of businesses you work in, your leader you work with, in your leadership culture and. Or coaching? And, you know, what are some of the common challenges that they face and how do you help them overcome these challenges?
0:07:10 – (Drew Sutton): Yeah, So I love the phrase riches are in the niches. That’s what people tell me. They’re like, oh, so, you know, you start this business. I come from engineering, and I lived behind a technical wall of secrecy. So all of the stuff that I did, I did with my core group of folks. I had about 35 people that I directly ran and so my network was kind of limited. I actually, because I’m an extrovert, I spent a lot of time trying to network, but still my network is kind of small. And so I get out there and my coaches have said to me, and again, if you don’t have a coach, like I have a coach. I am a coach. I have a coach.
0:07:45 – (Drew Sutton): Um, I think it’s as we were all watching the Olympics, right? And you see guys out there on the floor winning the gold medals and behind them is a bench of coaches. Um, so anyway, coaching is important. And I, and I practice what I preach, right. I drink my own Kool Aid here. Um, but here my coaches work. You need to niche down. You need to niche down. And I, and I tried to do that by industry, but it didn’t fit. Cause I help people in tech, I help people in nonprofits, I help people all over the spectrum.
0:08:12 – (Drew Sutton): And then they said, I said, well, maybe it’s not by industry, maybe it’s by bracket. And I certainly help people that are like 1 in 1.5 in revenue, up to 100 million in revenue. Like I certainly, that’s kind of my, my pricing structure fits that model. But I literally have a startup right now and she’s fantastic. And so with her I help on certain things. And then I, I have small businesses that I work with and then I have large organizations where I coach.
0:08:43 – (Drew Sutton): So if you, if you have a Lockheed Martin, I used to work at Lockheed. If you have a Lockheed Martin, it’s 100,000 people. It’s a fantastic organization. But no organization is actually 100,000. Most organizations are 10 to 30 people. And then you group those together and you have a larger organization, but you as an individual are never doing more than 10 to 30. And the questions that you’re wrestling with are the same questions. And those questions are, I went from really being a really high performing person myself, so get stuff done to now I have to get stuff done through other people.
0:09:14 – (Drew Sutton): And there’s a, after you get about 10 people that you’re managing, whether that’s your own business or in a large corporation, the question is, how do I trust people? So how do I know that they’re going to do what I wanted them to do when they’re not in the room with me? And when you don’t have that trust, you can’t take vacations, you’re working 60, 70 hour weeks, you’re stressed out all the time, the feedback you’re getting from your team is bad.
0:09:37 – (Drew Sutton): So I call it. So get stuff Done is kind of like the glorified GSD in the industry. It’s get stuff done. And everybody’s like, oh, I’m a get stuff done sort of. I’m a hustler. And I say it’s GSD is glorifying stress and distraction. So there’s this emotional thing where you’re like, I’m the smartest person in the room. I’m the only one that can solve this. And so you get your personal value from all the stress that you’re eating.
0:10:05 – (Drew Sutton): And that breaks at about 10, 15 people. So I help folks. That’s like, that’s my favorite thing to work on. My favorite client is that highly driven person, whether they’re in the large corporation or they’re an entrepreneur that’s at the 10. And they’re like, hey, I’m 1.52 million. And I know that I’m called to go to 10. I’m going to get to 10. But I’m stuck. I’m not taking vacation. I’m worn out. And I help folks switch from that.
0:10:32 – (Drew Sutton): I’m the center of attention to my people are the center of attention. And we put in the systems in place to get there. That was a longer answer than I minted. But, yeah, that’s. That’s where I’m at.
0:10:41 – (Bob Woods): No, it’s fine because. Because that actually flows, if you’ll pardon the pun. That’s coming up in a set in a second here. But it flows rather well into my next question, which is you talk about helping businesses reach a flow state that’s comes in and, you know, that’s similar to professional athletes. We just mentioned Michael Jordan. I’m sure that he had that, you know, going on in just all kinds of huge, huge numbers.
0:11:09 – (Bob Woods): Can you explain how leaders can cultivate this mindset with their teams? And especially the roles of discipline and passion play in achieving this state, which, to me, I mean, man, that sounds like a professional athlete. Sounds like college athletes, too, but definitely sounds like professional athletes because they’ve got to have discipline. And if they don’t have passion, then what are they doing there?
0:11:32 – (Drew Sutton): Yeah. So again, I kind of bring up the Olympics again. All the pro athletes have a coach, and the coach is not telling the pro athlete how to play the game. That’s the pro athlete’s job. Right. So if you have a team, you’re not telling your sales guy, this is how you need to sell. You’re not telling your. Your tech genius, this is how you do tech. In fact, my goal has Always been to be the dumbest person in the room.
0:11:55 – (Drew Sutton): Which in some cases is a challenge. Like, I’m not the smartest, I’m not the sharpest tool in the box, but I’m okay. And, but my goal has always been to be this, be the dumbest person in the room. And it’s. Emotionally, it takes a, it takes a hit. But when you get to be in that room of these amazing people, you’re able to do things that literally none of you could do by themselves. However, now you, you switch from being the smartest guy in the room to the dumbest guy in the room.
0:12:21 – (Drew Sutton): But you’re now playing the orchestra and that’s the role of the coach. So really all my clients are essentially coaches. I’m their coach, and then they’re just coaching flow. Here’s a couple of things that happen with flow. Um, and this. I’ll tell a story from little league basketball. Um, there was one kid on the team and when he would get the rebound, he would grab that ball, he would bounce it twice.
0:12:45 – (Drew Sutton): He would kind of walk as he like ran too fast. Cause his skills weren’t there. This is like a little 8 year old, right? He would run to the other side of the court and then he would shoot it. Sometimes he’d make it, but he would, he wouldn’t pass. He was not a great team player, right? But in his head, we get that ball and put it in that goal. At one time he got it at half court and he went the wrong way and buddy, he got it in the goal, right?
0:13:08 – (Drew Sutton): All right. That kid was in flow. He, he didn’t see the bigger picture yet, but he knew what his job was. He, he was emotionally connected with it. He was mentally connected with it. He had the skills at his level to do it. Uh, he’d probably practice it at home for hours with his dad, right? Um, or on and on the basketball court at school. Like that kid. I got the ball. I’m gonna go do the thing, okay?
0:13:28 – (Drew Sutton): When you have, when you’re on an orchestra, when you’re on a team of amazing ballplayers, you can’t. First, first they have to master. I’m gonna get that ball in that goal. So they have to master the individual skills. They have to put those skills together to make it bigger. Um, now you have a high performing individual. A high performing team has to practice the plays. So again, there I am. I’m a basketball coach.
0:13:53 – (Drew Sutton): Little league basketball. These kids don’t know how to throw a screen and much less a pick and Roll, much less a play. So I put little X’s on the ground and I put the kid on that, the one. And I said, okay, you start at the baseline, you run to here and then you go to there, and then you roll around him and then you go score. So I’m just adding a little bit of a skill, right? That is team play, not individual play. So your individuals have to be good.
0:14:15 – (Drew Sutton): But then you as a coach have to tell, you have to run small plays. And then eventually I added in a defender and then eventually added in the whole team and now we have a play, right? So I tell folks, R and R is in the R and R. So your rest and relaxation is in your roles and responsibilities. And so to get flow as a team, much like the individual has to go home and practice, right? You have to practice as a team and the coach has to say, okay, this is your position, this is your job.
0:14:47 – (Drew Sutton): And then when we all do that job together, we have a play, we have a pick and roll play, we have a throw in play, whatever. So most folks at the GSD stage, they got 10 people, you have a meeting and everybody raises their hand. They hate meetings, right? Here’s how you know that you need this help if you think to yourself, meetings are worthless. We would get so much more done if we didn’t have meetings.
0:15:08 – (Drew Sutton): We probably should have a conversation. It’s super common. I was there. But when everybody in the meeting comes in, the electrical engineer comes in, the mechanical engineer comes in, the stress guy comes in, the human factors guy comes in, the production guy comes in, the supply chain guy comes in and you say, this meeting is to get discuss assembly number one. Everybody knows their roles, everybody knows the role in the conversation, everybody knows the stuff they’re going to add and they know that they know each other’s side.
0:15:37 – (Drew Sutton): Like if I’m the point guard, then I know what the other guy’s going to do, right? So I’m not the other guy. I’m not posting up down underneath the goal. But I know what he’s going to do and he knows what I’m going to do. So when he sings a signal, he’s going to count in his head, 1, 2, 3, he’s going to move. We’re going to execute the play. Now you’re in flow and when you, when you do that enough, you don’t even have to count in your head. It’s just, you know what the other guy’s going to do, right? Right.
0:16:02 – (Drew Sutton): On a team, if you want to have rest and Relaxation as the boss. Everybody in your team needs to know exactly what they do for the organization and then, you know, their handoffs to each other. So R R is in the R&Rs Rest and relaxation is in the roles and responsibilities. Um, that’s. Yeah, that’s what I. That’s what I generally train folks on. The first we get together, we do one or two things first, and then the third thing we do is we start listing everybody’s roles and responsibilities, and I get a lot of pushback on it. Folks are like, we don’t need to do that here. We’re a team. Everybody just picks up the garbage when they need to pick up the garbage.
0:16:37 – (Drew Sutton): And that works, except that your key programmer is now spending time emptying the trash and refilling the coffee pot, which is. It’s a great team player move, but essentially you’re paying him a senior programming salary to take out the garbage, and that’s just bad business. And once you engage that. Oh, the other reason. The other resistance that we have is folks are like, well, I don’t want to live in an organization that’s. I don’t want to be a cog in the wheel.
0:17:05 – (Drew Sutton): Right. Well, so let’s change the phrasing. Don’t say, I don’t want to live in a cog in the wheel. Say, I want to be on the court in the pro ball game. I want to be the guy that’s chosen. I don’t want to be on the bench in the pro ball game. The guy that’s on the bench in the pro ball game. He’s passing out water. Yeah, the guy that’s playing the game. Right. The guy that’s the trusted member to play the game is amazing at his task.
0:17:28 – (Drew Sutton): Individual and amazing at his role and responsibility on the court. Teammate. Right. And that’s. So helping folks make that transition. I’m pretty good at it. I’ve done it with several folks. It’s made a huge difference.
0:17:40 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, yeah, that’s. That sounds great. That sounds great. So with all this. And let’s carry on the. The sports metaphor a little more here, all of this ultimately rolls up to the head coach to really kind of set the stage for all of this to happen. So as a CEO mindset coach, what are the most common mindset barriers that they face in implementing this kind of thing? And how do you help them shift their perspective to achieve the breakthroughs that. Or. Or even just the shifts? It may not be a breakthrough. It just may be A shift.
0:18:17 – (Bob Woods): But to achieve what they need to do to get their teams thinking in the way that you just described.
0:18:25 – (Drew Sutton): Yeah. The first thing you have to do as the CEO, and this is different from gsd. So here I am. I’m the amazing contributor. Like, I make miracles happen. Right. That guy, which you are still that person. In that case, you work long hours and you do the hard work. Let me put down my hand there. Sorry. You work long hours. The CEO, he asks himself, what’s its priorities? My favorite story on priorities is Richard Branson.
0:18:57 – (Drew Sutton): He says, you should write down your top 10 or 15 priorities for the year, every year, in January, you should write it down. And then on, you think about it for a while. Then on another piece of paper, you should write down your top three priorities, and then you should go back to that first piece of paper and throw it in the trash. And I get. What I get from a lot of folks is they’ll say something along this line, I just can’t get as much done as I used to. That’s one way it comes out.
0:19:21 – (Drew Sutton): The other way it comes out is I think I just need to be more disciplined or I need to work harder. I need to talk with my wife, and I need to figure out a way to get some more hours in the day or I need to hire a second me. That’s why all this comes out. And I tell each of those folks, actually, you need to. You need to set priorities, and you need to say no to a bunch of stuff that’s. So it’s not. Because generally, the folks that we’re talking about here, if you’ve made it to 1.52. 2.5 million in revenue, you are in like, the top 10% of businesses, small businesses in the world. Like, you’re doing amazing.
0:19:57 – (Drew Sutton): Your next problem is not more work and more hustle. Your problem is saying, no, I’m going to chase this bigger piece of the pie. And then, like, I have a client right now who hired a fantastic sales guy. And I said to him, hey, can you do me a favor? Can you give me two weeks of nothing but training the sales guy? And he was like, what? I was like, I want you to put all your other projects on hold.
0:20:19 – (Drew Sutton): I want you to. I want you to stop everything. I want you to pour into this guy. We’ll call him Craig and Jim Craig, I want you to pour into Jim and give me two weeks. Then once Jim’s up and running, because Jim is totally a fire forget type of guy. He’s amazing. Jim will Be able to run. But if you, like, give Jim two or three hours of your day every other day, then we’re gonna. We’re gonna be paying Jim’s full rate, and we’re gonna be stretching him out for a month and a half before he’s useful.
0:20:48 – (Drew Sutton): So priorities drop everything. Actually, the phrase priorities, if you add an S to it, it actually neuters the word. The nature of priority is priority. If you have priorities, you don’t have any priorities.
0:21:04 – (Bob Woods): Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s like something. Something I always heard, if. If there’s, you know, if.
0:21:13 – (Drew Sutton): If.
0:21:13 – (Bob Woods): If something is, like, is absolutely urgent, this is absolutely urgent. If everything is absolutely urgent, then nothing is urgent.
0:21:19 – (Drew Sutton): Nothing is absolutely urgent. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that’s the. The GSD guy accepts ten most important tasks. He works them simultaneously in multitasking, and he doesn’t get any of them done for a month. The CEO accepts one priority task, knocks it out this week, accepts a second priority task, knocks it out, and at the end of a month, has four or five things done right? And that. That’s how you. You gain momentum. Because small wins, like, if you want to do the Dave Ramsey debt snowball, small wins build emotional passion in your team.
0:21:51 – (Drew Sutton): Your team’s like, we’re doing this, we’re doing this, we’re doing this. And they get wins, wins, wins. And then their subconscious. And your subconscious can take on bigger challenges because you believe in yourself, because you got all those small wins. You know, you don’t have to say yes. You’re not worried about people liking you or being a. Like, what. Why didn’t you come to the networking event? Which you all should come to our networking event, by the way.
0:22:13 – (Bob Woods): And we’re going to talk about that a little bit. Fly into Lexington, Kentucky. You can do it. But anyhow.
0:22:20 – (Drew Sutton): Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So priorities is the number one thing I work with. And then the second thing that I work with CEOs on is you make a bunch of oaths when you are young. You’re like, well, when I get in charge, when I have my own company, when I’m in charge of that division, I’m not gonna. And then you, like, enter whatever the phrase is, and generally your boss, even though it hurt you or it hurt your best friend or whoever, it was probably a good decision. It was a tough decision, but it was a good decision to chase a priority and letting people let go of those old oaths. Like, when I’m king.
0:22:55 – (Drew Sutton): Well, when you’re king, you have to worry about a Lot of different things that you didn’t have to worry about when you were an individual contributor. And so do what’s right for the company to grow and let those. Let younger you be wrong. He might have been wrong. Let him be wrong. Tell him that you love him. It wasn’t his fault, and the pain was real, and it’s okay. But let all those old things that you said you were going to do go away and stick to your morals and your ethics, but move on with what is the next most important thing to do in. From a strategic perspective.
0:23:25 – (Bob Woods): Very nice. Very nice. So, you know, continuing with the leadership thing, you’ve had a broad lead range of leadership roles. So let’s talk about super superpowers. What have you discovered your. Your superpower to be through those roles? And I guess probably a good way to lead out of that is when you determine your superpower. How do you help leaders determine their superpowers as well?
0:23:55 – (Drew Sutton): My superpower is what we call culture scripting. I don’t know how I figured this out. To me, it’s one of those things that I can’t take credit for because it’s an. Like, I’ve just inherently always understood it. It’s always made sense to me. Okay. There’s this ancient Middle east proverb that says life and death is in the power of the tongue. And people take that different ways. Here’s what. Here’s what it means to me.
0:24:18 – (Drew Sutton): Have you. Have you ever had a vampire on your team or, like, in your life? Like, we’re just going to riff here. I’m going to. I’m going to do this with you, like, in real time. We’ll do the short version.
0:24:27 – (Bob Woods): No, that’s great. Let’s do this. Yeah, absolutely.
0:24:29 – (Drew Sutton): All right, so. And to protect the guilty, right? What’s the vampire’s name?
0:24:36 – (Bob Woods): Let’s call them. I’m trying to think of a name that I don’t normally have, so that. Actually, let’s call. Let’s call them Gail.
0:24:49 – (Drew Sutton): Gail. Okay. And I have one. And we’ll call him Jerry. Trust me.
0:24:52 – (Bob Woods): Gail, if you’re listening, this isn’t you. Trust me. It’s just the first time I can.
0:24:57 – (Drew Sutton): No. Okay, so you have Gail. So tell me fictitious Gail here, now that you both know that she’s an emotional vampire. She sucked her time away, whatever she did. Right. We don’t have to go into that part. But tell me some in retrospect, now that you think about her, what are things that you noticed early in your relationship with her that were like Rooted in the behavior that caused all your. All your pain. So, like, for me, this guy Jerry, he would always complain about the stupid guy that was in front of them. Like, he always complained about how dumb everybody else was.
0:25:30 – (Drew Sutton): So what about you? What did Gail do that was like, now that you think about it, you’re like, oh, that’s a red flag.
0:25:35 – (Bob Woods): Just, like, literally. Literally a vampire. Literally a vampire. I mean, just there. But. But. But as she’s sucking emotions out of me, she’s also kind of injecting negative at the same time.
0:25:52 – (Drew Sutton): Yeah. Negativity. Yeah. Right.
0:25:55 – (Bob Woods): Yep.
0:25:55 – (Drew Sutton): Yep. And then, like, was there, like, this element where they would come over to your desk and be like, can you believe Paul? And there would be, like, this pregnant pause where they were, like, inviting you into that.
0:26:06 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re like, oh, man. Okay, now I can’t believe Paul. What happened?
0:26:11 – (Drew Sutton): Right? Yeah. And then another one that often comes up is they will complain about how hard the task is, no matter what the task is. Like, I can’t believe I have to call Sarah. This contract is so hard. I can’t. Like, I don’t have time to do that. I’m sorry I’m late on this. Right. Do you recognize these sort of statements?
0:26:30 – (Bob Woods): Yep.
0:26:31 – (Drew Sutton): Okay. And we’re. I’m. I’m speeding this through because we have a shorter show here. Normally I would do this in about 30 minutes. So this is called. All right, well, we’ll finish up here. So I’d say. Okay. So now that we have some characteristics of what a vampire is, what is the opposite of a vampire? Like, tell me somebody that you really liked.
0:26:50 – (Bob Woods): Someone. Someone who. Someone who is generally interested in helping someone who adds value to your life.
0:26:58 – (Drew Sutton): Who.
0:26:58 – (Bob Woods): Who. Who actually. Just. Who is actually there to help you and not in a transactional way. Someone who is there who’s like, you know. You know, hey, what do you need? If you need something, let me know. If you want me to leave you alone for a little bit, let me know that, too. But I’m just. I’m here to help you in whatever way that you might need is probably the. Like, the easiest way to do it.
0:27:22 – (Drew Sutton): Yeah. And for me, the only thing I think I would add to that is somebody that would challenge me and be like, hey, man, this is your Bailey. Right? Like, not in a cruel. Not like. Like, hey, you’re screwed. I don’t care. But like, somebody that would say, you know, Drew, honestly, this. This is your task, and you just need to buckle down and get it done. Like, I had A boss that. His name was Brad. Brad was amazing. He used to do that to me. Occasionally he’d be like, I hear you.
0:27:43 – (Drew Sutton): Are you done complaining? Because you got to get it done. Like, you can either not get it done or get it done. Get it done. Yep. Okay, so now what we’ve. We’ve kind of structured here is we have the beginnings of a definition of a vampire and the beginnings of a definition of a great employee. Right? So one of the key characteristics of a vampire from the mythology is that a vampire can’t see themselves in a mirror.
0:28:05 – (Drew Sutton): Yeah. Right.
0:28:07 – (Bob Woods): Yeah.
0:28:07 – (Drew Sutton): And then the only way to kill a vampire is with sunlight or staking him through the heart. Right? So an emotional vampire or an organizational vampire, you have to take a stake, which is. I need a discrete deliverable on a discrete timeline. You have to stake them to the wall, or you have to bring in the facts and shine some light on the situation. Or sometimes it’s. Sometimes it’s more management or inspection.
0:28:32 – (Drew Sutton): Right? So you. You stake them or you bring the sunshine. Those are the two things. Right. Good folks don’t really need stakes, though. They. They will request a steak because they want to know, what do you need from me? When do you need it done? So vampires run away from stakes. Good people ask for stakes. Vampires run away from inspection. Good people love to get caught doing the right thing. Right.
0:28:56 – (Drew Sutton): All right, so now we’ve pretend like we’ve had this conversation and we both laughed a lot about your experiences and my experiences, blah, blah, blah. Now I have the beginnings of a little kernel of a culture script. And the word is the phrase is vampires suck.
0:29:11 – (Bob Woods): Yes.
0:29:12 – (Drew Sutton): So you’re like, oh. So when I. When I was at Lockheed, I had. I had three whiteboards up on my wall, and the middle one was the handles board. I used to call them handles instead of culture scripts. So I had. I had 12 phrases that meant a lot to me. If you worked for me, I wanted you to understand these phrases. And so everybody that came into my department, I did an onboarding process over about 10 weeks, and once a week, I’d take you out for coffee.
0:29:38 – (Drew Sutton): So it’s exactly like a training video, except I’m not teaching you how to do your job. I’m not teaching you how to put in your time. I’m not. I’m not giving you ethics training. I. We’re gonna riff on ethics training for a second. I love it. If I don’t have ethics, what does ethics training do for me? Right? Yeah. So my. My favorite moment on ethics. I. I Had to go to ethics training. And this is a Tuesday.
0:30:06 – (Drew Sutton): I was. I was already scheduled for Thursday. So for those listeners on there that like, hey, what? So I walk into the thing on Tuesday, so it doesn’t matter. I was in the room for some other reason, and my boss was like, hey, are you here for ethics training? I was like, yeah, let me see the sign in sheet. So he gave me the sign in sheet. So then I signed in and I left, like, right. Then just. He was like, right.
0:30:27 – (Drew Sutton): He was like, you. What do you. You can’t. It’s ethics training. And I was like, well, I took it last year, but I forgot. And I don’t know why you’re mad at me. Like, what’s wrong with this here? And he was like, drew. Anyway, so that’s my. I took it on Thursday. I want everybody to understand. I understood. But from the comedy of the moment, he was completely flabbergasted.
0:30:50 – (Bob Woods): So, so. So let’s get into culture scripting.
0:30:55 – (Bob Woods): Just a little bit more. I mean, just, you know, what exactly is it? You’ve kind of touched on it. What exactly is it? And, you know, using it to shape internal culture a little bit more.
0:31:09 – (Drew Sutton): Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, good. Good call for me to refocus there. Peter Drucker says that Strat culture eats strategy for breakfast. So GSD has no strategy at all. GSD is just chaos. And you’re just. You’re just making piles of dirty clothes. It’s just chaos. CEOs begin to be strategic, right? They’re thinking strategically. They have clarity on where they’re going. They have an empowered CEO. Clarity, empowered workforce, optimized operations.
0:31:37 – (Drew Sutton): Clarity. Okay? Culture scripting. You can’t have strategy. Like, let’s say that you’re a vampire and you work for me, and there’s like, four other folks, and they all work for me. I can’t build a world known brand on vampires. Right?
0:31:52 – (Bob Woods): Right.
0:31:52 – (Drew Sutton): My people, my culture determines what my strategy is, far more so than the reverse. So that. So then you would say I have to figure out culture. Well, a lot of people essentially hire and then fire until by random attrition, they get a culture they can work with, which is very different than a culture that they want. They just, like, get the culture they have. They slap a couple of value statements up on the wall that people read once a year in their ethics training.
0:32:23 – (Drew Sutton): Yep. Yeah, yeah. No, no ethics training. Actually, what you’re experiencing right now, ethics training, is a culture script. I tell the story about ethics training. Everybody laughs at it. But from now on, I had the phrase, well, at least it’s not ethics training. So what I’ve done in the comedy business is called a callback joke.
0:32:43 – (Bob Woods): Yep.
0:32:44 – (Drew Sutton): And so it’s called back. Yeah, yeah. So that’s what culture scripting is. Why you need. That’s how you do it, is you tell these funny jokes that everybody resonates with and you clarify it into a small phrase. Ethics training. Vampires suck. How to siege a castle, whatever. Yeah. And I help you make a culture script that fits in your mouth. Right. Because it’s your culture, not my culture. Let’s say that you think a 32 hour work week is the appropriate number of work hours. Okay, great. You’re French. I love it. Fantastic. Make it happen.
0:33:15 – (Drew Sutton): So when I work with folks, I help them make their culture. But there’s all. So in order to do strategy, you have to manage your culture. And this one is a huge takeaway. If you, the leader, are not managing your culture, someone in your organization is. Someone is always in charge of culture. Now, that could be a bully. That could be a click leader, which is just a bully with a fancier name. Somebody in your organization is shunning people for behaviors they don’t like and rewarding people and promoting people for behaviors they do like.
0:33:47 – (Drew Sutton): Somebody’s running. Your culture is being run by someone. I hope it’s you. I’m going to up the ante here because culture is the forerunner of strategy. Your only job as the leader is managing culture. You have no other job. And that is the mental shift. GSD is all about getting work done. CEOing is all about setting a culture that can get amazing work done. Yeah. Yeah.
0:34:15 – (Bob Woods): So, yeah, that’s profound.
0:34:17 – (Drew Sutton): Culture scripting is where we work together to decide. This is what I want my culture to be like. And it needs to be a culture that other people can live in. Like, I don’t want to. I don’t want to alienate people. So we’ll just say on the red and on the red and blue spectrum of the political world that we live in, I’m on one side and I had employees that were on the other side. Right. Actually, John Maxwell, you see this book right here?
0:34:45 – (Drew Sutton): This one right here? That one right there? Yep. It’s his brand new book and it’s literally about this problem we as leaders need to rise above. I need to create a culture in which red people and blue people and purple people feel deeply honored and respected in my culture. Right. Yeah. It needs to be productive. It needs to be creative. It needs to include People. It needs to exclude people. So Peter Drucker and Jim Collins wrote the book.
0:35:13 – (Drew Sutton): Book Good to Great. Good to Great is the book that all other business books want to be.
0:35:18 – (Bob Woods): Exactly. Yeah. It’s a fantastic book.
0:35:20 – (Drew Sutton): Yeah. So in. He’s the guy that authored this phrase, get the right people in the right seats. Have you heard that one? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Get the right people in the right seats. That’s not the sentence. The sentence is actually get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, then get the right people in the right seats. Yeah. If you. If you’re not scaling your organization, it’s not because of seats. It’s because you have the wrong people on your bus in the first. Driving your.
0:35:48 – (Drew Sutton): Yeah. And they’re driving your culture into the dirt. And so we said to leaders over the last 20 years, and it didn’t used to be this way. We said basically this people used to be sexist and racist, and you’re a leader, ergo, you must be. So you are not allowed to drive your culture because you’re an evil person. But you also have to keep meeting your metrics and your goals. It’s ridiculous. Now, I want to be very clear.
0:36:13 – (Drew Sutton): I think my best employees, my favorite people, are on the opposite side of the spectrum of the red, blue spectrum for me. And I deeply value them as employees, as friends, as colleagues, as co workers, as. So I’m not saying go out there and make a red organization or go out there and make a blue. That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is we can all agree that vampires suck. We can all agree that we need to.
0:36:44 – (Drew Sutton): There’s. There’s a phrase, why does the apple fall? Which is kind of like things have cause and effect and we need to plan for the future. That’s kind of the phrase. Yeah. There’s this stuff that I need you to agree with me on. I need you to work when it’s time to work, and I need you to play when it’s time to play, because I want a fun organization. So culture scripting is the method by which we can create the culture that works at work.
0:37:09 – (Drew Sutton): And that’s your only job as a CEO. And that’s why you’re not scaling, is because you’re trying to get stuff done with vampires. It doesn’t work.
0:37:18 – (Bob Woods): So you had mentioned John Maxwell before you recently gotten your John Maxwell certification. Congratulations on that, by the way.
0:37:30 – (Drew Sutton): Yeah, thank you.
0:37:32 – (Bob Woods): So how is that. It sounds like it’s influencing you already, but how has this Influenced your. Not only your leadership style, because it sounds like it already has, but how does it help your clients? What benefit do your clients have from you having this John Maxwell certification? And also just explain that really quick too, because I’m sure a lot of people don’t understand the significance of that.
0:37:57 – (Drew Sutton): Yeah. So you see the triangles that are in my logo, right? So if I ever going to go into leading into business consulting, I want to be. I want to do the big three, is what I call them, the big three. You have money, time and energy. Sometimes you would call energy morale. Like energy is about your energy, but also as a leader, you have team morale. So you have money, time and energy. Money, time and energy.
0:38:24 – (Drew Sutton): Like, I’ll ask people occasionally, when was the last time you took a vacation? How much vacation did you take last year? If you took less than 14 days of vacation last year, you don’t have a. You don’t have a job. You have a jail, like. And a lot of people are stuck. They’re at that 2 million mark and they’re. Or they’re at the corporation. They’re. They’re working 80 hours a week and they can’t get home to see their kids. Little League game. Right.
0:38:46 – (Drew Sutton): All right, that’s a time problem. And so with time, I have an operational system called Business Made Simple. There’s a money problem, which I have this thing called the $100,000 challenge. But the pinnacle of the pyramid is leadership. And it’s actually, I mean, I chose to be Drew Sutton leadership, not Drew Sutton operationalship, because it’s all about. It’s all about leadership. And John is Good to Great is the book that all other business books want to be.
0:39:13 – (Drew Sutton): John Maxwell is the leadership coach that all other leadership coaches want to be. He is. He actually believes it. One of my favorite, deepest phrases from his is, as a leader, I want more for you than you want for you, and it’s for you. I don’t want a lot of charlatans want you to grow so that they can harvest you. Right. In a lot of corporations, a lot of middle managers just want their metrics met and you’re the method by which they’re going to meet their metrics.
0:39:43 – (Drew Sutton): I had the privilege of working for a couple of great bosses. One of them said to me, he pulled me out for coffee, which is why I love coffee so much. And he said, hey, you have to leave. And I was like, what? He’s like, I’m not firing you. You can stay. But what is in you is bigger than what we’re doing right now, you need to go to a, to a large OEM and go spread your wings and fight your dragons and win.
0:40:06 – (Drew Sutton): And we don’t do that here. And it was nerve wracking, but I did it. And the result was I went off to Bell Helicopter, led research for them and I got 30 patents and then I leveraged that into chief engineering for Lockheed. And all of my success in life is because a leader looked at me and said, I want more for you than you want for you. And. And I was like, man, I guess the only thing I can do for the rest of my life is pay that forward and say.
0:40:32 – (Drew Sutton): Say the same to everybody I meet.
0:40:34 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. Yeah. So, so. And, and we talked about this a little bit last night, which we’re going to get into last night in, in a little bit. But you know that I want better for you than you want for yourself phrase. Sometimes that gets uncomfortable too, right?
0:40:51 – (Drew Sutton): It does. But you know, like, as a leader, you’re going to have performance. I used to have performance. I owned hiring and firing and discipline and performance reviews and blah, blah, blah. Right. They teach you when the person comes in, you look at them, you state the problem, you restate the problem, you get them to sign the paper and you leave. And it feels very weird. Like that disciplinary performance.
0:41:13 – (Drew Sutton): They call it a performance conversation, but it’s a disciplinary conversation. And I never liked it. I received a couple. They were helpful, didn’t like it. Whereas as a leader. So, like, if you’re going in and I’m trying to, like, wedge you into this spot because I’m tired of the problems you’re creating for me. That is a very narcissistic. I’m tired of the problems you’re creating for me. That’s why I need you to change.
0:41:38 – (Drew Sutton): That is super uncomfortable. That’s very dominating. You know, the conversation is very, get in your box. I don’t want people in a box. I want. I have somebody talked about. I had one of my bosses, he left. He, like, moved to Visions. He was talking to my current boss. My current boss said to him, how do you control Drew? And to his glory, we’ll call him Jim. Jim said, you don’t control Drew. You give him a target and you let him loose.
0:42:07 – (Drew Sutton): And that’s the type of people that I want. So your. Your question was about wanting more. It can get uncomfortable. It can get uncomfortable, but I think the opposite is way more uncomfortable. So when I look at you or look at my kids, we’ll just say My kids. I look at my kids and I’m like, clean your room. And they’re like, I do it like, no, I want you to live in a clean house when you get older, I want you to be the type of person that does the extra homework to get the a. Like, there’s so many more things in life that are based on this character trait of pick up your stupid clothes.
0:42:42 – (Drew Sutton): And it makes it actually way easier for me to have the tough conversation before it’s a discipline problem. So, yeah, it is a little bit tough, but it’s way better than the alternative.
0:42:53 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So now let’s get into something that we’re both passionate about, and that’s in local initiatives. So just a Scotia background for you. Once upon a time, LinkedIn local was pretty big, like 2018, 2019, like, in that area. And there were some things that happened in the background that we’re not going to talk about. But just in. But just generally speaking, you know, people would have local events and LinkedIn would let people attach their name to it with certain restrictions and stuff like that. But these aren’t sponsored by LinkedIn or whatever necessarily. But you could use LinkedIn as a draw to get people in there. Well, 2020 happened, and everything happened with 2020, and networking went away out of necessity. Let’s. Let’s face it, now that it’s starting back up, I don’t know if There are other LinkedIn locals that are restarting around the country and around the world, but we are most definitely doing that in Lexington with LinkedIn Local. We had, like, a very, very soft launch yesterday at a local place called Lex Live. If you want to see movies on. On an absolutely huge screen, that’s. That’s one of the key places to go here in Lexington.
0:44:19 – (Bob Woods): But, you know, when it comes to networking events, though, and we’re going to kind of bridge from that to networking events in general because they’re. They are starting to pick up again, and thank God that they are, too. How do you see groups like ours fostering connections with professional development within the local business community? And just how does it help the local business community in general? And why should people, you know, even think about being a part of them?
0:44:47 – (Drew Sutton): Yeah, I think business is about people. We started out the show saying that business is selling value at a discount. Like, I have a machine that makes pen, like, like pencils, and you don’t. So I can make them way cheaper. So we both benefit. When I make pencils and you make cars, I don’t know right the economy works when I’m good at something and you’re good at something. And we celebrate each other’s differences by both making something cheaper than the other person could make it. Right.
0:45:20 – (Drew Sutton): I think that’s lost in a world in which we live in basements. Like, I’m a super extrovert and I didn’t leave my basement almost for two and a half years. Like, I worked at work. I worked long hours at work. I was tired. There was Netflix. I like my kids. Like, I just didn’t want to leave the house. And now I, I don’t really want to drive 30 minutes into Lexington, which I used to do. Like to get coffee.
0:45:49 – (Drew Sutton): Exactly. There’s this one phenomena of we just, we’re all kind of home bodies now and then interacting with each other. We’re like, oh, this is the only time we get out, so we better make the cell. So we. Cause we’ve all been watching YouTube and we’ve all in business. We’ve all been watching the. This is how you do a networking speech. This is get your elevator speech. Get a hundred thousand people on the top of your funnel, then manipulate them in a one sided conversation until they buy your. And then climb them up the value chain ladder. Like, we all know the things and. Yeah, and they’re good things. I’m not picking on them terribly much. But we forgot that business is fundamentally me meeting with Bob and giving him something that he wants at a discount.
0:46:30 – (Drew Sutton): Like, I’m giving you something. You know, I’m enriching your life and I. And you’re enriching my life and then vice versa. Have you, have you ever heard of the Whitehall studies?
0:46:42 – (Bob Woods): No, That’s a new.
0:46:44 – (Drew Sutton): Okay, so we’ll try to go through this one quickly. And you can kind of kick me off if we’re going too long. So this guy named Whitehall in the 70s, he asked the question, how is it that the Nazis, the Germans, let the. Not like, how did that happen? Is it that the Germans are worse people than average people? And the answer is definitively no. So he said, let’s do an experiment. All right, here’s the experiment.
0:47:06 – (Drew Sutton): You’re the only person that doesn’t know what’s going on. So your name is Bob. You’re the only one that doesn’t know what’s going on. It’s my experiment and I’m bringing in Sam. So Sam’s here, I’m here, you’re here. You guys draw straws and Sam gets The short straw. So he gets put in an electric chair and strapped up to a zapper. And. And you’re sat behind a panel, and then you ask questions to Sam, and he intentionally gets them wrong, and you zap Sam.
0:47:32 – (Drew Sutton): But the thing is, Sam’s not getting zapped. He’s an actor. Right. You don’t know that. And that’s really important for the. For the conversation, turns out. Oh, so as he gets. As he answers wrong questions, you turn up the dial and zap him a little bit harder. The dial is clearly labeled fatal at a certain spot. Eventually, if you keep dialing it up, you kill Sam. Okay, again, Sam’s an actor. You’re the only person that doesn’t know what’s going on. And I’m an actor.
0:47:59 – (Drew Sutton): 65% of the people kill Sam for the 10 or $15 social experiment. They’re paid for because they’re in college. 65. The numbers go up to, like, nearly 95. If I put myself in a lab coat with a clipboard and I put a wall between you and Sam where you can only hear him scream. Yeah. You know what a corporation is? A corporation is a giant white hole experiment. You put people. You pay them a lot more. You give them a boss, and you put them in a building where they can’t see their customers, and you tell them, screw the customers.
0:48:36 – (Drew Sutton): And then you give them an ethics training every year to make yourself feel good about it. Right? That’s corporations. It’s all corporations. I’ve worked for some corporations. There’s good and bad people in it. But the incentive structure of the organization is a white hole experiment. Okay? Small business, medium business is different. Every client that has chosen to work with me is a friend who has trusted me with their most valuable resource, their time. Not their money, their time and their trust.
0:49:08 – (Drew Sutton): Man, that’s like. That’s what business is. Business used to be that it’s just a whole bunch of people that are like, hey, he’s the best apple picker. Hey, he’s the best veterinarian. Hey, he’s the best coal digger. That’s business. And we lost that kind of in the 2000s during the Internet bubble, but we lost it during COVID And to be a part, a small part of, like, I just met a guy named Tim Brown at the event. He and I apparently have been circling each other for the last six months. Like, we both know several people, and both of our people have told each other we should meet each other, and we finally met each other, and we’re 100% going to do some work together.
0:49:42 – (Drew Sutton): That’s right, man. That’s what, like. And that’s why you don’t get into business to be mean. If you get into business to literally serve other people and it’s super exciting, and to be able to be a part of that is. That gets me jazzed up. That’s why I’m involved in here. So I kind of went on a rant there.
0:49:59 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. And that’s why, you know, introvert, extrovert, doesn’t really matter. Go to networking events and tell me if I’m speaking out of turn here. But at least when I’m at a networking event, if I see someone and it’s kind of like, oh, I think that they might be a little introverted, let’s see if I can go over and see if they want to be introduced to someone to kind of break that down a little bit. And if nothing else, just make their trip to that event worth it for them. I mean, I would encourage people to do that.
0:50:36 – (Bob Woods): Drew actually has something that he does at networking events that helps with that as well. And, Drew, we weren’t going to talk about this originally, but I think that this is really important. So why don’t you talk just a little bit really quickly about how you facilitate that type of thing.
0:50:55 – (Drew Sutton): Yeah. So the first thing to understand is that we all love stories. Like, the best comedians are storytellers, not joke tellers. The best politicians are storytellers, the best leaders. Culture scripting is all about storytelling. Right. So you can go up and we’re all been told to do an elevator speech. And I hate elevator speeches. I hate giving my elevator speech. You hate hearing it. You hate giving me, like, nobody likes the elevator speech.
0:51:22 – (Drew Sutton): Somebody said that we should make one, so we all made one, but nobody likes it. In fact, whenever I give my elevator speech, I always tell folks, okay, but I’m going to put on my commercial voice when I do it. And I’m like, hey, well, that’s a great idea. Yeah. I’m like, well, if your business is like a small airplane if it has six parts, and then I go through the parts, but I do it in a different voice just to.
0:51:45 – (Drew Sutton): All right, so now we’re stuck with a problem. Elevator speeches are a bad idea at this networking event. What am I going to say? Don’t worry. I call it the art of networking art. The art of networking. Audience, tell me a story about your favorite client or the favorite success story. One of your clients had audience. So for me, I had this guy. He has a cybersecurity firm. Okay, tell me what result ar.
0:52:12 – (Drew Sutton): Tell me what result you got for him. Literally, after the first week of working together, we redid his schedule and in that month, he did more business that month than he did the entire previous year. Because I helped him prioritize a result and how fast I worked with him for a week and then the next month he did more business. So the way that would play out is somebody would say, hey, what do you do?
0:52:35 – (Drew Sutton): I’m not going to say, well, I’m a business coach and this is what I do. I’m going to say, I would say, well, I help tech entrepreneurs get more business done in a month than they can get in their entire year. Or I help small businesses double the revenue. Or I help, I help managers at corporations make a team that flows like a pro basketball team. People are like, do tell. How. What? Tell me more.
0:53:01 – (Bob Woods): Yep.
0:53:02 – (Drew Sutton): So I kept, I took it down from a 30 second speech to a five second speech. I made it interesting. And this is the art of good conversation. I gave you a thread to pull if you would like to pull it. You don’t want to pull your thread and you want to give me your elevator speech. I’m a mature dude. I understand that you think an elevator speech is an appropriate thing to do and so I’m going to listen to it.
0:53:23 – (Drew Sutton): But then after you give me your elevator speech, I’m going to say to you, tell me your story about your favorite client or somebody that you’ve helped in the last year that you were super excited about. And then when I asked that question, people fall into the art format, audience results, timeline, and then the conversation flows much more smoothly.
0:53:41 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, yeah. So yeah, yeah, it’s great. That’s. That, that’s absolutely fantastic. And that also leads into our final item because you’ve already done this in one area, but I’d like to do it, I’d like for you to do it in another area. So I love those one thing you can do right now kind of takeaways. So Drew Sutton, we’ve already done that on the networking side. Now let’s talk about the leadership side. The leadership game. Really quick. What’s one actionable tip someone can do right now to up their leadership game?
0:54:16 – (Drew Sutton): Let me put on my commercial voice. You could, you could get with Drew Sutton leadership and make a flight plan to smoother ride. No. Yeah. You can always reach out to me. I’d love to connect. I do free 30 minute assessments and consultations. So there’s lots of things That I can do to help out. Folks, it’s drew@suttonleadership.com. just schedule something with me or send me an email. We’ll get, we’ll get, we’ll get the conversation. Make sure you told me that you met me on the Selling Selling Social show, but I got the name wrong. What Make Sales Social podcast.
0:54:44 – (Drew Sutton): The Making Sales Social podcast. Make sure you tell me that so I can thank Bob for connecting the two of us. But yeah, I would love to have a 30 minute chat that’s done for you. Right? But if you’re like, hey, I’m, I’m busy, you know, I’m, I’m running right now. That’s where I’m listening to the podcast or whatever it is that you’re doing right now. There’s a couple of things if you want to. If you go back to the triangle time, I’m going to solve your time problem.
0:55:07 – (Drew Sutton): Get a blank calendar and fill in the calendar with your activities that are your most important. And hint, hint, it’s making money. Yes, it’s, it’s calling somebody, it’s going to a networking event, it’s calling somebody that you met at a networking event. Hint, hint, it’s making money. So if you’re like, oh, I need to write an email about the blue cups, no, that’s not what you need to be doing. You need to be spending a lot of your week making money.
0:55:34 – (Drew Sutton): If you’re a manager, you need to spend a lot of your week planning 60 and 90 days out. So not close. You need to, you need to be like looking, give me a call, I’ll send you a. I have a two week process. The first week you look at close stuff like what needs to happen over the next three weeks and then the next week you spend time planning for 60, 90 days out. Anyway, get a blank calendar, mark it up. That’s what you need to do.
0:55:59 – (Drew Sutton): If you have a money problem, you need to figure out there are three ways to make money. You can either get your current clients to buy more, you can get your current clients to buy more often, or you can find new clients. And finding new clients is always the most expensive. So think about your current best customers and call them. Because you already did that on your time chart, right? Call them and offer them a new product, offer them a follow up service, ask them what they like, what they would like you to do for them.
0:56:29 – (Drew Sutton): So if you have a money problem, talk to customers. If you have a time problem, block out your time on a calendar. And if you have a Leadership problem. Start asking yourself. And this is going to take some time, but set aside maybe 10 or 15 minutes in the morning. You could do it while you jog and begin writing culture scripts. My ideal employee behaves this way, or my ideal, or my, my vampires are this way.
0:56:53 – (Drew Sutton): If you can start writing down the red flags of vampires and the green flags of great employees, you will find stories that you can tell your team and you can be like, hey, this is my favorite story about. Actually, I’ll make. I’ll make it even simpler. Pick somebody on your team that exemplifies hard work and thank them publicly in front of everybody else. Be like, jim, you know, this is our morning standup. Hey, Jim, I just want to, I want to thank you in front of everybody. I know that you worked that extra whatever hours. That’s the type of people we are.
0:57:22 – (Drew Sutton): Or, Sally, you are amazing at customer service. You had a customer service call last week and you turned it around. They came in mad and they left happy with us. That’s the type of people we are. Thank you, Sally, for being that. When you praise somebody in your organization in front of the rest of the organization for a character trait that you value, you’re beginning to create culture scripts that the rest of the culture will love. So you ask for one. That’s for three. There’s the triangle.
0:57:48 – (Drew Sutton): I hope that’s helpful.
0:57:50 – (Bob Woods): That’s fantastic. And that’s a great way to end up today’s podcast episodes. So leadership and innovation coach, as well as team potential unlocker, as I’m calling him now. And feel free to use that if you want to as well.
0:58:05 – (Drew Sutton): Button.
0:58:06 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much for joining us today. Really, really appreciate your time.
0:58:11 – (Drew Sutton): Thanks, Bob.
0:58:12 – (Bob Woods): You’re very welcome. And thank you for streaming this episode of Making Sales Social. So remember, when you’re out and about this week or any week, be sure to make your sales social.
Outro:
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