Communication, Trust & Toxic Leadership | Lee Caraher on Branding, Culture & Great Teams

 This week on Diversity Conversations, communication strategist, CEO, and author Lee Caraher joins Eric Ellis and Tommie Lewis for a powerful conversation on leadership, workplace culture, communication, trust, personal branding, and the hidden cost of toxic leadership.

Lee Caraher is the CEO of Double Forte, a national strategic communications and PR agency, and the author of:
• Millennials & Management
• The Boomerang Principle

Known as a “professional straight talker” and “the team whisperer,” Lee shares practical wisdom and deeply personal stories about building strong teams, leading with integrity, receiving difficult feedback, and creating cultures where people can thrive.

In this episode:
✨ Why communication means nothing until the message lands
✨ The hidden cost of toxic leadership
✨ How appreciation increases productivity
✨ Personal branding & reputation
✨ Why great teams TALK
✨ Building trust in organizations
✨ Leadership feedback & self-awareness
✨ Entrepreneurship & culture-building
✨ Communication as a business driver
✨ Creating workplaces where people belong

Lee also shares powerful reflections on parenting, leadership, athletics, music, entrepreneurship, diversity, inclusion, and the importance of allowing people to fully become themselves.

Connect with Lee Caraher:

Email:
Lcaraher@double-forte.com

Website:
Leecaraher.com

X / Twitter:
https://twitter.com/LeeCaraher

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/LeeCaraher1

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/leecaraher/

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/leecaraher/

YouTube:
www.youtube.com/@leecaraher4222

Podcast:
https://www.everything-speaks.com/

🎙️ Diversity Conversations explores leadership, culture, equity, communication, and authentic human connection through meaningful dialogue.

Tags:
leadership, communication, toxic leadership, workplace culture, trust, personal branding, diversity conversations, Lee Caraher, team culture, leadership development, communication skills, organizational culture, emotional intelligence, executive leadership, authentic leadership, entrepreneurship, DEI, workplace trust, public relations, strategic communication, company culture, leadership podcast, business leadership, team building, leadership coaching

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to Diversity Conversations, where we engage in thought-provoking dialogue to identify leadership solutions to today's most challenging conflicts. Stream live each week, Saturday, 9 30 a.m. to 11 a.m., hosted by Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Strategists and CEOs Eric Ellis and Tommy Lewis. Join us and add your voice to this engaging diversity conversation.

SPEAKER_03 0:30

Good morning, greater Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky, the United States, and the world. My name is Eric Ellis, and I'm the president and CEO of Integrity Development Corporation. And I'm joined this morning by my good friend and brother, Tommy Lewis, president and CEO of Make It Plane Consulting.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Good morning, Eric. Good morning, T. What's up, baby? Hey, nothing much, man. I'm so, so happy to be here this morning. Uh because next week is a short week here in the U.S., we have Memorial Day and Memorial Day weekend. And uh I uh uh played a little hooky yesterday. You know, I usually get off at 5 30 and I got off at 4 o'clock. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:09

I saved an hour. Yeah, you really stole from the company that day. Yeah, we had to make that up. So a minute at a time.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

So I'm happy to be with us this morning, man. It's a beautiful Saturday. A little rainy, uh, but uh it's good for the yard, it's good for you know nature, and uh just really excited to be with you this morning.

SPEAKER_03 1:31

Same here, Tommy. It was rainy before we came in here and got connected with you all community, and now all of a sudden, the sun has come out, and so we're uh excited about the conversation that we're gonna have uh together today. Uh we've got an uh exciting guest that's going to join us. Uh Tommy, how was your week?

SPEAKER_02 1:53

My weekend was my week was was great, Eric. Um so we always uh are in the mode of continuous improvement. And uh in the in that vein of continuous improvement, uh we work with a lot of adults, right? Some of them 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 years old, doesn't matter. I think what we think is everyone can improve. And no one has the answer to everything at all. Right. And so this week um we had a couple of returning clients from four years ago. Two returning clients that said, Hey, uh, I know that we had sunset our relationship uh about four or five years ago. Are you still in business? Yeah, it's been 30 years and we still got 30 plus years to go. Right. Um we we still are having issues with our people, and these are seniors, right? They're 60 years old, man, 40 years in the crowd, they're 70 years old, and they they haven't figured it out. Right. And here's what I'm overjoyed about is that those who believe they figured it out have not. Because when there's something new that happens not only to the world or to their community or to their business, but to them, uh oftentimes folks uh rely on past experience with the past solution for a current problem. Yesterday's solutions do not work for today. There's pieces that will. And so in our approach, what made this week good is our ability just to listen. Again, our tagline is to help uh individuals and organizations uncover their inherent strengths for sustained growth. So there are some things that you do know that will work. And then can you take a risk to learn something different about yourself, about your team, about your organization? And these clients said, you know, we we are ready for that. Right. And so that's that was uh, you know, two and three hours of listening um and allowing people to organically surface uh solutions that are selfless and that will help uh identify opportunities before they present themselves. That's what we did.

SPEAKER_05 4:28

Right.

SPEAKER_02 4:29

Right. Before the opportunity said, here I am, we can identify, oh, that's coming down the track, that's gonna be good. Or this person's been with the company for five years. Let's listen to them too, right? And we we just had a ball this week, uh, externally with our new and returning clients and internally because in closing, Eric, building this four billion dollar bridge, uh, and we're very happy, right? Yeah, right. 4.05 billion dollars, which is real money, we have it, right? Um, it's uh it's becoming a huge project, right? A huge project. And we're excited to say, hey, there are some problems that we never forecasted, but let's put on our thinking caps, let's not do what we did in the past, let's do what we need to do in the future and get it done. So we're building bridges literally and figuratively.

SPEAKER_03 5:29

That's excellent. Uh, this was uh exciting week for us as well. Uh Tommy, they always are. Every week I get a chance to learn, both personally and professionally. I've continued to uh radically uh stay committed to shifting uh my diet and to bringing discipline into the way that I eat. And I'm not a person that uh that cheats uh when I make a cold turkey uh decision, then I stay with it because for me, snacking is gonna send me all the way back into, you know, what crackers, candy bars, everything, you know. So I'm grateful. And the fact that I'm tracking the numbers, Tommy, uh gives me uh it gives me dopamine every day because I get a victory every time I get a chance to take my numbers, my blood glucose numbers, which I did this morning. I was under 100, like, you know, so I got a little victory already. Uh, but my body is also uh screaming uh at my brain, and they're uh, you know, like, what are we doing, Eric? Aren't we done yet? I mean, we made the point. You made the point, we're done, you know, and so I'm in that fighting. Uh, but with clients, I had a chance to do some training this last week, and I was sitting in a session where uh the head of the union said, you know, I want to really share with everybody in this class that what Eric is saying here is what he says to our senior leaders too. I've been in those conversations and I've watched him. He is honestly trying to do everything he can to help improve our business. And uh he said, I've actually seen a lot of leadership utilize some of the skills. He says we just got to get them to not just saying it the right way, but also being committed to sometimes being open to making change. And so that's that's the next uh that's the next level. And I saw a post this week, Tommy, and it really was powerful to me. It was a post that talked about uh why companies don't do more against toxic leaders. And what the post said was that uh that it's not that the employees are not speaking up and sharing that my leader is toxic, it's that companies oftentimes institutionally sort of refuse to do anything to dramatically change that. Right. In other words, uh the cost for covering that bad leader is baked into the business. Indeed. I was like, what? Like they just bake it in. So instead of doing all the work that it would take to try to get that fixed or right, I just bake the cost in. And so then I started looking at uh information around uh leaders and employees because one of the challenges that I find is that oftentimes when we talk to leaders about uh things that they need to prove, improve, they they say, hey, are you making sure that employees recognize that they have responsibilities too? Yeah, good point. Uh but uh the research says that employees and leaders have shared responsibility for the culture, but leaders have owned have the authority, they have an unequal amount of authority to shape uh the things that uh create uh benefits uh and cost. So they control all of those things that make this work, and so they have a higher level of responsibility.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

Yeah, Aaron, thanks for sharing because uh when you said that I almost jumped out of my seat because in a previous life, uh the organization that I was uh executive with, we had 75,000 employees in 82 countries, and our culture was unequivocally toxic. It was it was how it operated. So not only just toxic of you know, I don't feel a certain way, just the language that we used internally. Yeah man, it was it was different, and we're athletes, and for me, whatever, right playing football particular, barracks sport, right? Uh the industry of uh of construction, it's a lot of language and all that good stuff, but that was the vernacular of leadership. They would curse you out and call you names, right? And so uh in closing, you know, I you know, I'm I am who I am in the boardroom, and I am who I am outside of the boardroom, right? And so sometimes that line gets blurred for me, and so when there was some colorful language, right?

SPEAKER_03 10:22

You step into that.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

Yeah, I step into it. I'm not afraid to touch it. I'm not afraid to touch it for whatever level. Whatever and I remember, you know, from the coffee throwing, they used to throw a lot of coffee. Okay, oh yeah, okay. Used to throw coffee, and you know, I had to, you know, right, right, and so then the leaders would not do that to me, right, right, and so that was that line that I drew for us to understand. But constantly, particularly in HR, we would hear the complaints of a said leader who had said something uh inappropriate. I'm not talking about inappropriate, hateful, right, out of the this is the way we do it, and this is the way we say it. Our clients at the time, our clients said, You all the worst people to work with, but your product is good. Because both basically the product was by way of the worker bees, right? The leadership was selling the company, managing, et cetera. But the the tech folks, the operational folks, they were down on the ground. And so they were doing their job well. But yeah, we got, I mean, I can go through the list of clients like IBM, United States Postal Service, right? Uh Telecom, uh Israel Telecom, etc. They're like, you all, you all the worst. And said, Oh, we need to remove the toxicity. And what we did was there were three or four senior executives who said, you know, I'm now 60 plus years, I'm looking at retirement, I'm looking to have a better positive legacy. We're not gonna do that anymore. And then people start falling suit, right? Right. So sometimes that culture starts from the top, drives down through the bottom, surfaces up, all that good stuff. But toxicity in professional life and personal life is no good.

SPEAKER_03 12:17

Absolutely. And so uh we continue to be grateful for the work that we do. Uh, Tommy, I I know you see it the same way. We look at our clients and their issues as puzzles, and we're simply trying to uh become smarter around how to unlock that puzzle. And and much of that is tied to unlocking the voices of the people that are within the organization because if they actually listen to their people more, they probably need us less. Uh, but uh I think that uh, you know, we're we're grateful for the work that we get a chance to do. Last thing I'll say, and then we're gonna bring up our guests, uh, is that uh I mentioned the last time that I've sort of shared with a couple clients this notion of operational disciplines, that they're the the same operational disciplines that you apply to the work, getting the work done and making sure that everybody knows what they're doing, they can repeat it, you measure the quality of it because you want that work to be done well, you gotta provide those, you gotta implement those same operational disciplines to the people side. And one of the lines we say is that without uh applying those to the people side, you're leaving uh sort of people-oriented success up to chance. So if you don't train people on any skills, then you're just leaving what happens to people up to chance. That becomes a bell curve, then. You got 20% of leaders that can be great, uh, come from great families that communicated well, so they know how to communicate. You got 20% that are horrible. They came from families where they got cussed out, so that's their leadership style is cussing people out and then a bunch in the middle. The way that you get around that is by applying operational discipline so that people are behaving in the workplace in ways that allow people to function at their highest level.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

That is outstanding, Eric. We will like to always invite our community to like and subscribe so that we can be with you every Saturday morning. Eric, if you don't mind introducing our guests.

SPEAKER_03 14:22

So we're bringing up our guest, Lee Karaher, and she is the president and CEO of Double Forte, and uh she's gonna come up here shortly, and uh, we are so glad to have you. Thank you. We had her scheduled to be with us uh uh a month or so ago, and uh and uh we're on different and so she's on time, you know, on her side. Uh and I don't think we made that clear. So we apologize again, but we're so grateful to have you today. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 14:53

I am good, and I am so uh energized by the conversation we you guys just had that I don't know if we can get the conversation you want to have with me, but uh okay.

SPEAKER_02 15:02

Well, we can talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

My song, gentlemen. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 15:09

Indeed, indeed.

SPEAKER_03 15:10

And so uh uh Eric, yeah. So so what I wanted to do was to have you introduce yourself to our community in terms of, you know, uh, you know, our community loves to know something about our guests. Uh and so it's helpful if people can understand where you're from, uh, you know, how you grew up, the values that you grew up with, and who are the uh people or experiences that have made you who you are today.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Oh my gosh. In the second hour, what are we gonna talk about?

SPEAKER_05 15:43

I love that already.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

I uh I am let's see, I grew up on the East Coast in New England um with my family. I'm the oldest of three girls, and my mom and dad um came from very different backgrounds, which sort of expressed, but also came from very sort of traumatic backgrounds, but very one was very, very privileged, and one was very, very not privileged. Um, and that sort of um, and then what what uh when you think say what people um impacted us, what what I we came to know over the course of our like into our 20s was our parents worked really hard not to bring the legacy of their upbringing into our upbringing. So um it wasn't perfect, obviously it wasn't perfect, nothing's perfect, but when we when we learned more about and um about how and I've learned a lot about how legacy transcends generations in terms of uh you talked about toxic culture, but toxicity and and behavior and all the things by generation to generation to generation. Uh one thing I have to say out of that is uh so thankful for them. My parents recognized that they were, my mom would say broken and tried not to bring that brokenness. They brought their own brokenness. I mean into our family. Um I grew up on the East Coast in Boston in Providence. Um and um uh in Providence, my parents put me into an all-girl Quaker school, which at the time I was very reticent for, but when I got to college, really understood what a huge gift that was. One, there were no rankings in Quakerism, there is no ranking. So you never really knew where you were. You knew if you were in AP class, you knew you were like at the top end of the class. But there was you never knew where you were, never had a thing. And that was so freeing to know that because I came in, I was had a very different education before I went to that school. And by the time I transcended to get to the end of that school, like I was there for five years, eight through twelve. Oh my gosh, if I had been labeled by my number, and we see that today in schools, so many people get labeled by the number, and that was not a thing where I went to school. Also, the thing about being in an all-girl school is that when I went to college, um uh the girls or young women, uh, we knew day one who went to an all-girl school because they were the first, they raised their hands day one. And those girls who were in co-ed classes didn't raise their hands until year two or three. And that was such an advantage for when I think those are like little, I mean they were huge things in impact, but they were sort of like small decisions my parents made. Well, we'll put them in that school. Oh, okay. Right. Um, and uh from uh, you know, and an all-girl, small, all girl school, and went small, I went to Carlton College in Minnesota, which is a I want to go back.

SPEAKER_03 18:45

Okay, let's go back. What you said was so powerful. Uh, I have a friend of mine who is brilliant, one of the smartest uh brains around finance that I've ever met. Uh, but she's worked in so many organizations where she worked with men who had the position and the title, she did their job, and and and they were so um uh you know uh critical that she now doesn't fully know how brilliant she is because of that experience. And so to hear you talk about people being able to speak up and raise their hands right away because of the uh the school that they attended is a powerful thing. And I just wanted to give you another second to just weigh in on that because it's what I did with my daughter. I was so glad I put her in sports. My daughter's my oldest child. Uh uh I've got three boys and then my daughter. But because I put her in sports and had her competing against boys a lot of times, she doesn't take any crap off of any guy. And I think that that's so powerful.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

Um, I would just say, you know, because I'm what we learn young, we take forward. Either we take it forward in a positive way or we work against it and try to change it with us, right? And the um I'm so fortunate to be in that situation. We were all all the girls, we were all in athletics, we didn't have choice, right? So I played field hockey. Um I'm also a musician, so I was in this elite choir. Um, and it wasn't a cho a manner of choice. If that's you, I didn't have to choose, I had to like manage my time well. Um, and if my grades slipped, then they would push you out, right? So you could only do one. But I the opportunity to do many different things at a young age, um, I think has, I mean, I'm 62 now. I mean, I see it every day in my life, right? Um, in terms of uh, and at that time, Title IX was just starting. So my sister, two years younger than me, she played in the first co-ed baseball team in Boston. And she still talks about how transformative that was for her, that she got to play with boys because there weren't enough girls who wanted to play at that time. And now I look at the WNBA, I look at the the professional women's hockey, I look at the professional rugby, and it makes me cry. When we go to these, you see women my age who are in athletics in in high school and college, and we go to these professional, we there a lot of us are crying because it's so powerful. And I think that the lessons though of sports and of elite music, I look for, uh we're sort of going off topic, but I always look for athletes and I always look for elite musicians and theater kids because these are um kids who uh if particularly in team sports, for they had to be great themselves, and they also had to be great with others. And if we can find people who are great themselves, who are you know they're incented to keep themselves at the top and so they can be on the team, and you can only really be on the team if you're playing with others and you're looking to that other person who helped you get the goal. Um, the same thing is true. With elite musicians, they are driven to blend, they are driven to complement each other. And then theater kids, you know, you you piss off the backstage people, you're not getting your costume on. I mean, that's not happening. So these kids who come up with this um, this drive and this curiosity and this learning of a thing to master and to command and to keep moving on, when they get the opportunity young to do these things, oh my God, it just plays off for their whole lives. And um, when my parents, my mother, my mother's rule was you can do anything you want, as we'll pay for any lesson you want as long as you practice. And as soon as you stop practicing, you're out. So, I mean, we are all three of us, all girls, you know, I played recorder, I played, I was in the choir, I played um clarinet, I was a gymnast, I played I was skating, and then I rode horses, and then all that, and then you can't do all that, right? Then it forces you to make change. My mom forced us to make choices based on what we were good at, what we wanted to do more of. Uh, and it literally, as soon as you didn't practice, you were yanked, and you had to beg your way back in. And I, you know, usually she said no.

SPEAKER_02 23:14

So did you did you did you find yourself having to make a decision between two things that you love the best? And if so, what what was that process of yeah, you know, I I love these two things, I can't do them all, and one of them I may not do the best, right? But then there's one that I love the most. Yeah, what was that one?

SPEAKER_00 23:44

Um you came down to yes, yes, and because we were able to um dabble in so many things, but dabble it with intention, like you could you had to commit, right? Um, you know, we all for myself at least, I would get to a certain level. I would like, I was always a fast riser in anything I wanted to do, and then I would hit the talent level, right? I would hit the can I get past the talent level? So in skating, I love skating. I had the wrong body for skating, and um, there was just no way I was gonna get past no matter what I did, no matter how light I was, but my body is totally wrong for it. So there's some things that are genetic that you're not good for. However, my body is perfect, perfect for uh soccer and uh field hockey. And when I went to the school in Rhode Island, it was field hockey was the game. No one played soccer, field hockey and lacrosse. So I went into the, I don't even know what field hockey was, and excelled, and then in college, I was you know captain of my team two years. Uh it was D3, but at the D3 schools, the athletes at D3 schools are so committed, no one ever goes to their games because everyone's in other games, right? But um for me, the decisions were what is fun still? What can I keep doing? That in this whatever it is, because it takes discipline, you have to wake up and do these things, and uh, and then I was like, you know what, I'm never gonna do that. Like so when I'm my father is a card was a cardiac, you know, retired cardiac surgeon, and a couple of things about that. One is that it was hugely inspirational from what he was doing because it was early in the career, he was on the balloon, all these things, and I was just oh so enamored with what he was doing. So I worked in his labs. He worked, um, you know, he worked to um do the uh catheters and the zippers and the balloon, all the things. So I was got to work in his labs, and I really worked. Like I everyone's like, oh God, we got the doctor's daughter here. And I was like, no, give me work, give me work, give me feedback. And the feedback became something if you're an athlete or a musician or a theater kid, you are getting feedback all the time. If you have good coaches, right? So those people who are willing to take feedback, they also have a huge advantage going into their lives, right? These people who don't get feedback, good feedback, I mean, they're bad coaches, right? But they're at a disadvantage. I see it all the time. Anyway, so my dad inspired me so much. I wanted to be a doctor. So I got to college, I was like, I hate this stuff.

unknown 26:32

Right.

SPEAKER_00 26:32

I hated the work I was gonna have to do. And it was, it was, I was in tears. I was like, I hate chemistry, I hate biology, I hate all this stuff. I'm gonna do it for the rest of my life. And I was in um a good enough situation where I'm like, you know, I can't, I cannot do something I hate. I can't, I can't, even though the end result would be awesome. Nine years of being in something I detested, I knew was gonna break my soul. So I knew that early enough because I'd make a choice, I'd made choices earlier in my life, right? I had to give, I had to give up something so I could do something else, right? So I was very fortunate that way. And the other so when I told my dad, I didn't even tell my father. I mean, I decided that freshman year, I didn't, I didn't had to declare at the end of June sophomore year. I already knew I was gonna be a history major. Not even that, I was gonna be a medieval history major because I loved it. Right, and I called home, they we didn't have phone. Uh Carlton doesn't, it was egalitarian, so there were no phones in the rooms. There were everyone had to have 21 meals, the whole thing. I called my dad, I'm like, Dad, I didn't wanted to do it before I got home. I said, I just I mean, I declared my major today, dad. He goes, Oh, Lee, great. What'd you declare? I declared medieval history. And um, I don't want to be a doctor. And my father actually got a little weepy, and he said, I'm so glad you want to you don't want to be in this life. I'm so glad you chose that. Because I don't think you'd be happy. I'm like, I know I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. So I said, You could have told me that a long time ago, that would have made this decision a little easier.

SPEAKER_05 28:02

But wow, just so supportive, right?

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Because he didn't even ask. Everyone always asks me, like, what'd you do with that? My parents did not ask me, What are you gonna do with that medieval history major? They're like, We're gonna learn something, right? And the other thing I learned from my father, because he was a um cardiac surgeon, was in our household, please and thank you were implied. And we never said it, never. And because my father always said, Lee, it's it's implied. Please and thank girls, please and thank you are implied. Just know that if I tell you something, I'm saying please, and I'm saying thank you. Because if I say please and thank you in the operating room, someone might die. And literally, that was the perspective that my family had. And so, so much later in my life, I had my company, I was out for 12 weeks with a surgery. I had to recover. This is after my company was 10 years old. And um in that time of recovery, I slept so much and I thought about what am I gonna do? And I got a coach after the 12 weeks I was out, and um, the coach did a 360 on me, you know, it was great. And I found out that everybody thought I was so rude. Like, what do you what? Like, I was the nice person I knew. What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_05 29:17

Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Well, I'll give you all raises. What are you talking about? You come to work, you stay here, had the highest retention um in our whole business, like in the business, we had the highest retention nationally, but people thought I was rude. Even small company as a leader. I'm like, what I was crushed, and they're like, you never say please or thank you. And so that was a total reflection on my upbringing of please and thank you are implied, right? And I had to learn how to say please and thank you at 42-ish, I guess, somewhere in there, 50, somewhere in there. Um changed my whole life, a and it changed our whole business, which is already succeeding. I already had the highest retention rate um in our business. So when you talk about toxic leaders, right, when you started, right? I had no idea it was a toxic leader. I thought I was killing it.

SPEAKER_04 30:11

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_00 30:13

No clue. There was a time when someone come in came into my office early on in that in that my own company. When I started my company, they're like, Lee, we're scared of you. I'm like, Why? Oh my gosh, what do you mean? You look when you think you do this, and we think you're mad at us. I'm like, oh, I'm just thinking. I'm just thinking. Because my outside voice and my inside voice are pretty aligned, which sometimes is not a good thing.

SPEAKER_03 30:38

I want to ask you a question, and then uh and then I want you to talk more about your business. Yeah. Like just, oh my goodness, I've got to have this. Uh how did you receive? I mean, how did you get to the point that you internalized and believed what they were saying? Because that's the point that I've seen that so many leaders, like you said, uh, have not never gotten a lot of feedback, so they're not good with it. Uh, but uh when you're in your business and it is succeeding, you've got a lot of data that's saying that you're doing some things right. How in the world did you ever sort of believe what was being said to you?

SPEAKER_00 31:19

So I chose to have this the coach, because when you know you guys run your own bit, how lonely it is, right? You're by yourself, people are looking for your different help, you're looking for your direction. And like, what are you gonna do? Like, what what's your drive? What's your next step? What's your thing? And there's really no one to talk to about it, right? So I was part of EO when I was in San Francisco, and now I have my own peer group here and I live in Wisconsin now. Um, so I joined a peer group, so that was great. And then one of my peers is like, you know, you should get a coach, you should get an executive coach. I'd had one earlier in my career that someone, my one of my bosses, gave to me, right? Mostly so I could work better with her. And that just coached me out of the whole company, but that's another topic. So I got the coach, and I'm a data person. I read, I read, I read. I read 52 books a year. Half of them are fiction, half of them are not. I read like you, Eric, I read all, you know, I list and read. And um so she did a uh she chose probably the most expensive uh 360 format so that I couldn't question the data. Right. So she knew me and so she does the intake, we talk, we talk, we talk. Um, and her process was she was doing uh her process was her 360 was not just data-based, meaning other people were it was really such a huge, it was 40 people who had to input to this thing. And um I scored so high. I scored so high, and she's like, I've never seen these numbers, and then oh my gosh, Lee, Lee, Lee, Lee. And then it was, and I've never seen these numbers so bad on this one talk. Appreciation, right? And so it came through on appreciation, and I I it crushed me, crushed me. And if I I realized I was gonna believe the other numbers, I had to believe this number.

SPEAKER_03 33:18

Oh, I love that, right?

SPEAKER_00 33:19

If I was gonna believe how good I was, I had to believe how bad I was on this rubric, which I had chosen. I mean, I had agreed to pay this extra money for this rubric, so and that's where we focused. We focused, my work was focused for the next year, was on appreciation, and then the numbers, it was all please and thank you. I mean, it literally started with please and thank you for me, which I clicked in like I well, it's implied, of course it's implied. You wouldn't be here if I didn't thank you. What are you talking about? I mean, no, right, you have to be so explicit. Uh, and that's the thing my father forgot to tell me was that in the in the operating room, you are so explicit, you're exact saying exactly which scalpel you want, you are saying exactly which silk you want. Yeah, and that that's a whole thing, right?

SPEAKER_05 34:08

But in discipline, we got it all.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

You don't got it, right? So um we started I started practicing this, and people thought I was like insane. They're like, who the hell is she? And what did you do with our boss Lee? And um I forced appreciation. We have staff meetings at the end of every staff meeting for a whole month. No, 13 weeks, because that's how long it takes. 13 weeks, I made everybody turn to two people in the office and say, What do you appreciate about them? And then I would go around the whole company, like some, well, just the whole company, there's 40 of us, and I would say one thing every week I was appreciated for all those 40 people. It took so much energy. I mean, I was wiped. It took so much energy in me to figure out, hey, I didn't know all those people that well because you can't know 40 people all that well. But then I forced it on everybody else, and we track our time at my company, and we tracked our non-billable time, and within two months, we had increased productivity by 2%, and within four months, five percent productivity just output, and that's the only thing we changed. Please and thank you. So then the data reinforced the data, right? So I think that for me, what I believe if I I because I'm an athlete, because I was an elite choir, because all those things, I look for that feedback, I look for the data, and I I'm glad that I chose she forced me, you know. She was like, here are your options eight thousand dollars and seven thousand dollars. Well, obviously I'm gonna choose the eight thousand dollars, it must be better. She totally played me. So, um, but if I was gonna believe the good stuff, I had to believe the bad stuff, and that's what you learn with feedback early in your life, right? You're good at this and this and this, and now you can do this too.

SPEAKER_02 35:53

This is what I was speaking to about continuous improvement.

SPEAKER_05 35:56

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:58

So if uh you know, if you're uh in your teens, 20s, you're you're uh you're still kind of uh attached to the values, norms, and beliefs of your parents or your audience or your media community. Then you get to a place of discernment. Well, how would you like to be happy? And then you you're still leveraging those ingrained values in how you are dealing with people, doing business and living life. That's your true north. Then you get some feedback. We can either accept it or reject it, right? And sometimes the acceptance of feedback can take a long time, right? So it's not just you gave me feedback, oh, I'm gonna change. Yeah, no, no. So then, say you're in your mid-20s, then you get some feedback in your early 40s, and you have a you're in a different place, you have different experiences. You have sometimes that uh epiphany, like I thought I was rocking it, right? Well, well, you were, but at what cost?

SPEAKER_00 37:12

That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_02 37:14

That's it. Now you move into your 60s and start to look at the sunset, right? As you're moving into retirement, as you're trying building your legacy, as you're looking at the next chapter in your life now. When you start to get feedback, uh, you can accept it or reject it. Some people reject it, you know, for the last 65 years. I've been who I am. I've I've been who I am. I and they said, well, what's that look like when you're 80 and not identified with your profession, your company? Who are you now? Well, that's a good question. Now it's a different brand. Right, it's a different image, it's a different reputation. And so from a business and personal perspective, I believe that branding is is important. Yes, but I also believe uh we're talking to an expert, we also believe that uh I believe that we can adjust the brand. So sometimes the brand is what we put out there for people to see us as, sometimes is what people how they receive us. So they may have said, Lee, you know, you were kind of rude. My brand, Lee says, and I'm paraphrasing, my brand is efficiency, productivity, knocking out the box, home runs, wins, wins, wins. And they're saying, Yeah, we're winning unhappily.

SPEAKER_00 38:47

Oh, that's yeah, for yeah, I mean, I think that I mean there was a some something die about something didn't match up, right? So I had the highest retention rate, so people liked being there. So they gave me the they gave me the there was doing something right for those people because we can anybody in my business can find a job tomorrow if you're good, no matter what the economy is, right? So at the same time, obviously I was tamping down productivity, what I valued, right? With um, because of the please and thank you, the appreciation, right? So when I unlock, we use someone used the word unlock, when you unlock that blind spot, everyone has a blind spot. When you unlock that blind spot, you uh so my pro we went up five, five, six percent, right? But we know the data says for appreciation, teams that feel appreciated um can return 30 up to 30 percent of the bottom line. Well, so we got five, six percent, which I was thrilled, I mean, so thrilled of like, oh my god, it worked! Oh my god, it's right. Oh, and I, you know, now I people can't shut me up on appreciation, right?

SPEAKER_05 39:59

Right.

SPEAKER_00 39:59

So, and then you have to learn how to appreciate different people different ways because some people like being called out, other people don't, you know, then there's a whole nother thing on that. But then, but there are companies who learn this, who get rid of that they call them the toxic A. I don't believe there is a toxic A. If you are toxic, you're a B. So if you relieve that toxic A player who's obviously returning something the board likes, right? Performance. And you said earlier, I think Eric, or maybe Tommy, you know, they baked that into the equation. They didn't make anything into the equation, they didn't know better, right? They had no idea what they could unlock. And then when they do unlock it, they're like, Oh my god, I should have done this 10. This guy should never have had that job because a toxic A player doesn't exist. Um all that is is waste. That is waste. Anything that you are not allowing people to contribute in um a good way uh to your company is waste. And if you think about it that way as individual, we all own our own businesses, right? Oh my god, if you're just thinking about the opportunity for your people and you have to give them a lot of feedback, they're not gonna do everything right. I'm not gonna do everything right. But if you're all moving in the same direction and you have appreciation and growth, and um along those things, you're just unlocking growth the whole time, and that keeps you so relevant because nothing's changed more than how we all communicate in the last 20 years. Nothing.

SPEAKER_03 41:26

Love it, love it, love it. Love me. Oh, oh, you you know that we could be here to the end. You said you made a joke out of it, and we're gonna talk about the second hour. You're absolutely right. And so I want to pivot you to the work that you do, and then I think you actually even had a chance to look over Tommy and my uh sort of websites and social media, but talk to our community about what it is that you do.

SPEAKER_00 41:53

Sure. So my company, Double Forte, is a public relations and strategic communications firm, and we do what we do is um help our clients achieve their goal through communication. So, what's a client? Who do they need to talk to? Who the who they're talking to, and how does that happen? And how do they talk to them in a different way? So is it uh directly? Is it what do you say? What do you mean? What do you who you're competing with? Who do who are you? Why should I why should I care? Um, and that looks like social media, that looks like media relations, that looks like speech writing, that looks like thought leadership stuff, that looks like article, that's what it looks like. Um, and it also looks for me with my um because on the thought leadership, I do most of my work at the C level, it also looks like leadership because today the the internet, the social media has been the one one of the most wonderful things and the most what terrible things, but the wonderful part of social media is it's the great equalizer. It's the great equalizer. We all have our own platforms if we want to use them, and more toxic people have been removed from business because of social media than ever before. What you used to be able to be opaque about, you cannot be opaque about anymore. Um, and then the reality is you have to deal with whatever that truth is, right? So um that's what my company does. We're I started in 2002, so we're 24 years old. I started actually, you talked about you know things that happened. I never intended, I'm an accidental entrepreneur. I started my company because my mom got sick. She was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, she was gonna live for you know three months. I'm the breadwinner in my family. At that time, you couldn't work remotely. I was like, I'm gonna be with my mom. So I gotta I'm gonna have to make my own rules. To make your own rules, I'm gonna have to start my own company. Well, here we are 24 years old. But um because basically, guys, I'm unemployable. Now that I know I can say no. I mean, seriously, who's gonna hire me? But when I started my company, so that one, I got to make my own role because I hated being in agencies. I hated it. It's a long story. I won't bore you with it. But if I oh god, if I have to have my own company, I'm good at this. I've I that company before, I you know, I'd done I'd done this for a long time. I was highly regarded. I had all these accolades, I disliked it intensely, but I was I disliked most of it, uh some of it intensely. But if I start my own company, I had a quarter and a nickel, guys. That's all, I mean, that's what I had. So um, all right, what am I gonna what are my bottom lines gonna be? So this comes to the brand, which is I only want to work with good people. I don't not want to be forced to work with, can I say, can I swear? Yes, yeah, with assholes ever again, right? Right forced to say yes because I mean I was a president of an entity within another entity, but I didn't you don't have a lot of choice in a publicly traded company. You have to do whatever they say, right? And I will you you'll you will work with them. I'm like, no, I'm not gonna. Yes, you will. And I literally I would be there that space, and sometimes I would go get a competitor, so I wouldn't have to work with the other one. But when I had my own company, it was like, okay, what are my rules? One, I what do I you have to know yourself so well to be a good business owner? So I know that if I'm not interested, it is dead. I I mean, it's terrible. I also know that I'm not good by myself, not good by myself. So my first rule was someone has to be interested in the business. And there's a lot of reasons you can be interested, you haven't never done it before. I love sports, whatever it is. Two, we have to be good fit because you can be a great team internally and a great client and suck together. So if you're not a good fit, like on chemistry, experience, expertise, don't take the business even. And number three, you gotta pay us. We like to eat.

unknown 45:59

Right.

SPEAKER_00 46:00

And number four, no assholes. So those four rules, 24 years have stayed the same. What we have done, we've changed our business model like five times because I started the company before Twitter. So, right, but all the true, we only work with good companies and good people, we only do things we're interested in. If you're an asshole, we fire you. We've had to fire six clients in 24 years, so these are choices that are sometimes financially challenging, but life enhancing and business enhancing, because over time they build, right? And the reputation, and I sometimes we should equate reputation with brand because what when when someone particularly if you're a person or people who are doing the service, right? But if you are let me see, I have this, I have this mug, right? So missy, right? So I'm gonna pour into this brand, like this cute little bunny, and you know, all the things, right? But my person is what reputation and brand are what people say when you're not in the room, and that's what you have to remember for people and service businesses. Reputation and brand are the same, the same. And so when you talked about that 60-year-old who's like sunsetting, well, they're gonna say, you know, in the one of the best books, do I have it over here? No, the seven habits, Stephen Covey, which is so old. I mean, older than us, right? Right, but the first chapter is write your own obituary. Yeah, that's the first chapter, write your own obituary. And if you can only write she worked well, you are screwed. Why, why are you here?

SPEAKER_02 47:40

Why are you here?

SPEAKER_00 47:42

And then for myself, how can I use my company? We all have to eat again, eating. How are you gonna use it to be a force for good? And those are choices you can make when no you have to choose to make those choices. So that's what we chose. It's not been easy. There's many times I've been like, oh god, it'd be nice if I could just say yes to that million dollars, and I didn't, and every time I've broken or bended that rule a little bit because someone went, Oh, wait, god, it'd be so easy. We have regretted it. Stopped bending the rule probably five years in. So I forget what the question was, Eric or Tommy. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 48:19

Yeah, but I'll tell you what, I'd love to get this on another day, but I'd love to get the checklist for what makes a client in AHO. Because that's interesting because you're obviously because you're data-oriented.

SPEAKER_00 48:34

Well, I'm gonna tell you. Yeah, there's some factors that you're I can't open it right now because I do have a actually there. We have a white paper on this, it's only as a white paper, it's like two pages, right? So that when client people come to us, uh employees, we these are not acceptable, right? One disrespect. Disrespect is lying to us. If you lie to us, it's gone, right? And that's happened. That's usually the thing that has made someone us fire them. They lie to us, which if they lie to us and we act on that lie, that puts our reputation on the line because we act on our clients' behalf. So lie, number one. Number two, uh, unreasonable expectations. We are all for high bar. We set a high bar every time. We are we enjoy the give us the stretch goal, right? But if your company doesn't do the things you need to do for us to achieve for you, right? No. You know, like we had a client who's like, Well, I want to be on this is what I want to, uh I want to be known for this, this, and this. And I didn't run that account, I don't run that that many accounts. And the woman who runs it, she goes, I need your help, Lee. And uh for my so for my role in the company, I'm a lot of offensive linemen, right? Like, I'll do this and you weren't around me, kind of stuff, right? She calls me and she goes, They're they're insane. And in the end, it wasn't they, it was one person who had been added to the team after we had come in. And uh, what they wanted was for his own career. It was uh it was he was there to career build, not to actually help the business, which by definition is not career building. Another topic. So um we I had to, I that's when she deployed me to say came in and uh called a meeting with their president, and then I said, We're gonna have to run, we're gonna exercise our contract on this. We have a 60-day out, and let's figure out the best way to do it. Because we just, you know, what you guys want and what we can deliver, they just don't match. And the CEO was like, What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_05 50:39

Right.

SPEAKER_00 50:41

And the other person had told us the whole way that the CEO was on board, right? Lying. Again, disrespectful. So if you don't have a good expectation, if we can't deliver, we should get out, right? What else is an asshole? You've known everything that you need to do. You've had a schedule, you're on Trello, you're on Monday, you got a predator, you got a Gantt shirt to Tuesday. You know when you're going to the bathroom and you cannot call us early in the week and you call us on Friday at four. You say you need something on Monday at nine. No. Is someone dying? This is my first response. Is someone dying? Did somebody die? Is there blood? If none of those things are true, we'll talk to you Monday morning. And you gotta have um confidence to say those, to say no, right? Or well, Lee, we need to get it done. I said it'll be triple. We'll call we'll we'll uh we'll bill you triple for this over the weekend. Anything after four on Friday, triple. That's outrageous. You know what is outrageous is that you knew about this two weeks ago, you didn't call us, and now we have to adjust to your emergency, which is didn't need to be one. Three times, three X. Well, can we negotiate that? Yeah, we can talk on Monday. So, um, what you get from me, and what my people like about that is that I'm protecting them, and if we do break through that time, then I get to compensate them extra for them adjusting, right? Right?

SPEAKER_02 52:07

I think I think that that last point, including all the other points, is a is a very good and critical point for uh entrepreneurs and business owners. Here's why when your client sees you as an integral partner, then two weeks ago, when there is an issue, they will let you know because you're part of the process. They view you as an outside entity or a fixer or a garbage person, right? Right, you try to work through everything, and then at the last hour, let's just throw it to the garbage folks for them to clean up and Lee is saying time out. First of all, we are not the garbage people, we're not gonna clean up your mess, right? Second, if we decide to do it, right, there's a fee, there's a premium triple cost. Premium fee. So now you can make it hurt, right? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 53:18

Because they, you know, most people can't. Well, there's some, you know, if the C if it's C level, they can approve that triple fee. But most people, you know, they find that some they they get themselves in this problem because they didn't manage their own time well, and then they their boss calls and says, Why can't you do this? And uh we track everything. Yeah, well, we've talked to that person four times in the last two weeks. Not once did she tell us that this was happening, even though we know it's on her gantry because we can see the gantry. Why? Because you are we are valued partners of yours, because we demand that we have to see, you know, we can't obviously can't see everything. So, not once in four weeks did she bring it up, four times we talked to her, and now it's due Monday, and she's calling us at Friday at four. So, yeah, three times.

SPEAKER_02 54:05

So, I have a quick little question. Um, and this is both respect.

SPEAKER_00 54:10

Sorry, that was the thing. Assholes don't respect people, and that's how that's a way. I'm sorry, I'm just gonna finish that. That is a way of disrespect is expressed in agencies.

SPEAKER_02 54:20

That makes sense professionally and personally. Have you experienced where someone on your team has rubbed a client the wrong way? And so now there's a threat of the brand or the reputation being damaged, and then you had to come back as the senior leader to say you know, and to repair lack of trust. And so I'm asking this for two different reasons. One, professionally, for those business owners out there that have they're growing their workforce and not as close to the brand reputation, yeah. Uh, or owning it, and then also personally, when we're in our personal relationship, someone may be speaking out a term about us personally, and we've had to come back and say, no, that's they're lying, right? Or have truth, or that's not it. Can you talk a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_00 55:17

Sure. So I think that um, yes, that has definitely happened where um it hasn't happened in a long time, but it definitely has happened where uh an employee has that happened at Double Forte? Probably. I can't remember it, but in previous worlds for sure. And um, you know, when the client calls, if when the client calls, here's the two things you don't want, hey, how are we doing? That is the worst thing that you could actually how we doing.

SPEAKER_05 55:46

Oh no, we're not doing very well, right? Right, how we doing it's not good, right?

SPEAKER_00 55:54

So um, yes, and so then I think the key there is not you when you hear that, how we doing, or I need to talk to you about Joe or whatever. The you had to take a deep breath. You go, absolutely tell me what's going on. And you have to listen the same way you'd listen to that critical feedback about yourself, because that person is representing you, right? Um, and tell me everything. This happened, this happened, this happened, and he said this, and with all the things. I'm like, okay, so in my and then I well, that outcome is not okay. So let's figure out first of all what has to happen right this second for to make you whole, and then we're gonna go back and talk about the behavior or whatever the hell happened. So let's make sure that we're not you guys aren't left in a hole in terms of the work or the output or whatever it is. We're gonna triage this now, and I commit to you that I'm gonna, you know, and so I'm gonna extract that person from this, I will deal with it, or I put so and so on it. So we elevate immediately and we solve the problem that we're looking for, but we do not ignore the other piece, right? Now, so that I had to learn the hard way. So I learned that you know, that takes two times of just automatically defending your people for that to backfire in you. So the first piece is what problem do we need to solve right this second? Let's triage. All right, I will do it, I will commit to you, we're gonna make this happen. Then we're gonna we're gonna backfill and go figure it out. So then tell me everything. Um, and then you learn when you say tell me everything is to say, actually, tell me what has to happen right now. Like, what are you worried about right now? Because they're not calling because they just oh, I put it on my schedule. They're calling because something's wrong. And then to say, okay, how do we get here? It's actually not important how we got here. What's important that we get there? It's right the second. Okay, now we're gonna triage the whole thing, we're gonna under unpack the whole thing, and then when you find out that someone, you know, didn't do, didn't um do, then how did they think it was okay to do that? The real issue is not the real they did something wrong. Our team, someone on our team did something wrong. Is the issue that they did something wrong? Because everyone's gonna make mistakes. The issue is why they thought that was okay, right? And that is about standards. That's about making sure your people understand what your standards are, they understand what your behavior what you expect on behavior, what you expect when something goes wrong, what you expect like when you know, we never want. I've had those calls at Double Fort, they've had the how we doing call three times in the first five years of the company. We're 24 years now. So now I learned like how do we avoid that question, right? Always is that we we invert the service, right? So you do it early on, so we bring problems to our clients. We are not gonna make this goal, guys. It's not gonna happen. So we have some solutions for that, but the standard, the behavior, someone thought it was okay not to do something, or someone thought it was okay not to fess up to something. That's a standards issue, that's an education issue that could be a that's probably for us at Double 14, it's probably not a um uh what's the word, you know, personal um integrity issue for us, but it's an education issue. Oh, that was fine to do it my old agency. Well, that is not fine to do with this agency, right? Exactly. So right, so when you're hiring, that's it's all a hiring question around integrity, and then and then it's education, like what are your standards? It's never comfortable, it's the worst because you know, I my my my approach is oh god, how did I fall down? What always someone thought that was okay? Oh my god. And it's only been a couple times in my the the double forte where I was like, Yeah, that person has to go.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:01

Yeah, let me answer. I just want to follow up and then we're gonna uh move to the last portion because our time is just blown by because we bring it in a branding.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:10

I'm so sorry.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:11

Yeah, okay. Uh what I would say is that uh we could take any one of those three examples and spiral down a rabbit's hole into well, did you just immediately believe the person that's calling you with the complaint? But here's my thought. I've heard you say the word standard a few times. And as you describe that we have standards, then my assumption almost is that if there's a client calling you about something, that actually your standard includes the kind of update from your people that if there was anything there, that that would have been surfaced. If there's a difficult client or any of that kind of stuff, that should you should already be aware that there's something else happening here. So if a client calls you and you're not aware, then to some extent, that means somebody on my team is not uh in tune with this client and informing us of a potential challenge.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:10

Absolutely. So, I mean, so we have a thing at the agency, no one goes alone. No one goes alone, and that um is really about me because I go alone. I and then I can promise things that are not are not possible because I'm like, oh, of course we can do that, right? So I learned that early, you know, just don't no one goes alone ever in any we're a high CC um heavy copy, you know, email copy. No one is on an email by themselves, and uh some that makes some people uncomfortable because it's so transparent, right? The clients love it because there no balls get dropped. Um, but you know, depending on how you you should just trust me. You're not here to work for yourself, you are here to work for them, and you know, so if you're not comfortable with that, that you know you can be great at what you do, but you're not gonna work great here, you know. And you can be great, doesn't mean you you're a good fit for us. Um, and that happens.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:13

Here's what I'm going to do. We're going to make an executive uh decision, Tommy and I, to extend our time because what you're saying is so powerful, and you had to come back. And uh, so I just think that there's so much that our community will be able to come back and sort of review. You're just a bunch of wisdom, uh expertise is powerful, but then the character side of that is powerful as well. Why don't you go ahead and pivot to to branding and then just talk to us about uh what people should think about as they're uh as they're looking at the whole concept of branding?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:50

Well, I think that's you okay with that Tommy's like, I gotta go.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:58

We're just at the age now when you gotta go, you gotta go. Hello. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:03

Um the so I think when you think about branding, this is about your standard. A brand is your reputation. A brand, it like we can talk about are we do you want us to talk about personal brands or like miphy brands?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:16

I think personal brands, personal brands, okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:19

Because so much of us uh um particularly social media has changed this so much. Like no one ever talked about personal branding, and now we have our own media, you have your own YouTube, you're spreading to the world, right? So um let's think about personal branding. Um it and again, like I said, it's I think about personal branding and reputation interchangeably that way for people, and it's what people say when you're not in the room, right? So I think Tommy was talking about his company that was so toxic, and he had all these great big clients, and they're like, You're the worst people to work for. Is that what you want people to say? Because that's what that means is when you're out of that entity, because you will leave a terrible entity, you will you will go a good person goes, they don't stay. Um, you have to transcend the fact that you were at that company, which was terrible to work with, and you have to come from a zero. Think about that. You Tommy had to come from a zero because he was at the terrible company to a positive, you had to go through zero to actually get to the positive side. Um, and when we think about it that way on a pendulum, a pun, you know, this stasis. No, stasis is bad, right? You either you're moving forward or back, you're never at stasis. Zero is almost impossible. So, um, what do you want people to say about you when you're not in the room? I am comfortable. I had to get comfortable. I am comfortable with people saying she's a hard ass. They will also say she will she will put herself on the line to make sure that you are doing good stuff, and that they achieve and that they have that that double forte lives up to their promises to you. They'll also call you on your crap. And if you're you know, and that's a kind of the we only work for clients who want that, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:22

I love that you could you could pause it. I love that. So what you're doing is uh in in if we're talking in religious terms, it would be said in the terms of uh equally yoked. Yes. I think uh that that as a as an entrepreneur, you have to find the clients that are the right clients for you because if they fit, then they get a chance to take advantage of the powerful wisdom and insights that you have, but also some of the standards that you operate out of that are going to. Enable them or create a higher probability that the thing that they're trying to accomplish can be accomplished with you. Now somebody else may have a different approach and a different way of doing things. And so if your way, and that doesn't mean you're inflexible, that just means you have a real clarity about who you are and what you're best at. That's back to what your parents said is that you had to make choices about what do I am I'm best at. And that choice is amazing how that lines up with what you the way you're approaching business.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:42

And one, uh the Episcopalian um religion is very inquisitive, right? It's a lot of questioning. And it's pushing, pushing, pushing, like prove it, you know, kind of stuff. And the um thing I learned so much in my faith is that we all have gifts. We everybody has a gift, everyone's born with a gift, and you can you can nurture it, but you need to nurture that gift. It doesn't, and I learned that from my parents too, obviously, with the lessons and all that kind of stuff, right? So it all sort of highly aligns on that. But you know, and you can use your gift to make a difference for others, or you can make positively or negatively because again, I don't believe in stasis. Like I love that. I love that and some of the great food. I don't believe in stasis that way. So um, so I want to lose my gifts to make a difference for others in a positive way, and that came from my religion, but then it translates into my business because my business is me, right? My name is not on the business on purpose because I didn't want everyone to be asking for Lee.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:50

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:51

Again, I'm not good by myself, right? So I know this. So I'm not interested in about the Lee story, really not. You know, I I you know, please fly, fly without me, you know. So um, but I'm interested in um making a difference for others and my and um that I think the brand, my brand on that is I'm really good at what I do. Really, I mean, I learned really good at what I do. I'm not great with everybody, not everybody should hire me. I should not work for everybody. Um, and uh I can surround myself with great people who are good at different things and have different points of view, but in the end, we have to be pretty narrow on what's integrity and pretty narrow on what's a good standard in the company. But everyone could have a lot of flexibility in in their own expression of it, as long as those standards are are true. So when you think about your personal brand, is what do you want people to say when you're not there? I am comfortable seeing Lisa hard to ask. I'm comfortable with that. I don't like it, but I'm comfortable with it. I don't want to be one, you know, come on.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:05

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:07

Um, because uh people the people who would say that who mattered, not everybody matters to me, um, if they're unrealistic, if they want something that's not they're not don't have their own equally yoked responsibility in it, right? Um so one, what is everybody's what do you want to be known for? So as a business, so that's and then for me, when you're highly aligned in yourself and you're highly aligned in your work, that just makes life easier because you're not fighting against it. Because when we are not uh when what we do for eight to 10 to 15 hours a day, we can talk about that as business owners, right? But it's not grading on your soul, oh my god, your life's better. Because if you're doing something against your soul, it is inefficient. And you know how I've already talked about how much I hate inefficiency, and inefficiency comes out of being a you know, understanding yourself, understanding appreciation, and moving towards the good and look knowing that you can't be perfect. So, uh, so what do you want people to know about yourself? What do you want people to know about your business? And with the same people show up at your funeral from your business and your personal life, would they say the same things? If you can get to something in the zone, like that Venn diagram has a lot of space in the middle, you're you're doing what you should be doing in the world, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:30

I love this. I want to I want to add this about you, uh, just specifically. Uh, I am just so grateful for all the experiences that you've had in your life that have allowed you to be wonderfully, powerfully, confidently who you are. And I would want Lee uh your gift to be experienced by everybody. You have this wonderful balance of brilliance and the freedom to discover what you're good at, what you're not good at. You have a very uh a lot of clarity around the excellence that you're going to be delivering first to yourself and then to those that you serve. But what you don't see travel easily with that kind of confidence and brilliance is the the requisite complimentary humility that says that I'm open to learning and I'm open to feedback. And so all of that has been demonstrated in the stories that you've told. And I just think that people are grateful who work as a part of your team, uh, that you are demonstrating to people that it's okay to be radically clear about who you are, yeah, and to look to try to find complementary relationships that I can be myself and deliver to them what's best for them. And so I just I'm just watching that. Thank you. I want my daughter to operate like you. I think that out of me and Tommy's history, the world of uh inclusion uh equity is really trying to create environments where people can be fully who they are because when they can be that, they can deliver something amazing uh to the clients they serve, the world that they're in. And I just see the I I really uh appreciate the comfort that you uh have in your own skin.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:43

Thank you. I think um I really I just I'm very moved by that. So I really appreciate that. And I I think part of it is one I told you about my parents, you know. Yeah, two, I have these two kids. One is uh um special needs, he has developmental disorders, will never be independent. He's 25, but he you know he brings joy to the world every single day. I mean, he's just wherever he goes, he's the mayor. It's like and my other son is a gifted musician um who was very different in his life, and um was he plays the organ, like the church organ. Right, so he's not and he's 6'6, so everyone wanted him to be like, you know, an athlete. And he's like, I'm not an athlete, I am a musician. And so part of this understanding of myself is for through my children, because they are so dramatically different from the norm, right? They didn't do anything normal, right? That would you'd see in things, um, and bringing from my parents that um just be you, like because they had had the you know, they had tried so hard to be themselves. Um, and if that like I think about it too, I'm going to go back to the religion side, you know, Paul with living stones, like we are all living stones. And if you think I was just in England for three weeks, and you know, there are stone walls everywhere, everywhere, and they don't have any cement. There's nothing that keeps them together except the fact that they all are set together, like a little one, next to a big one, next to an oblong one. And if you think about, I think of my team that way, living stones. We all look different, but together, we are so strong, you cannot take us down. And I think about that for my family too, right? We are we're wackadoodles, we're wackadoodles in the character family. We are we had a kid, um, we we're in a uh where we live in Eau Claire, we have a summer baseball league that's a college league. I think you guys have one too, where you are, but the Northwoods League, and we host a fan, we host a kid. That's all they're all college kids are trying to get to the biggest, you know, all those things. We host a college kid. He came yes last night. I'm like, this kid's gonna like scream out of here because he's seeing us in our feet full of wack-a-doodle glory.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:55

Right, awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:56

We're all different, right? But together, if we just accept that, and to your point about being diverse and inclusion, um, I always felt like the outsider in so many ways. Um but when I got to create my own company, when I I'm sorry, when I had to create my own company to provide for my family in a way that I could look at myself in the mirror. Right. And you can't look yourself in the mirror again, it's it's so wasteful because greats on your soul, you just have nothing to give. Um, but um, I was gonna do it in a way where I was obviously affording myself the um the flexibility to be where I needed to be for my mom, who ended up living four years because she was a stubborn, which was wonderful. So I lived in two places for four years taking care of my mom and building my business at the same time. But for me not to afford the same flexibility for everybody else would be I couldn't look myself in the mirror on that. And the only way you can do that is actually actually understand that no matter how you know people look, everybody is different. Everybody is different, everybody has a gift, and it's not your no matter if they look the same, everyone takes the you know, you do your MBTIs, you do your enneagrams, you do all the discs, you do all the stuff where you ever get numbers and letters and all the kind of stuff. So I'm an ENFP, I'm an eight. Me too, I'm an ENFP, I'm ENFP, I'm an eight, I'm a high I high D, you know, all the things, low S, oh my god. Always compliance, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:16:40

Never measured by the all those things, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:16:46

So you could get you could get insight into me, but every ENFP is not gonna look like me, every eight is not gonna look like me, every high D, I is not gonna look like me. So everybody has stuff, right? And if you just accept that everybody has that gift, and your job as a leader is to unlock and to allow those gifts to grow and to the benefit of your own performance, they are there, you are paying them, and if you can unlock their stuff by allowing them to be wrong but have a consequence. Um, learn something new. I force education. People don't want to be educated, you're not gonna be happy at double four things. Also, if you're not gonna laugh, you're not gonna be helpful. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:31

Let me throw this at you too, and then I'll let Tommy jump in. And I guess we got to wrap up. Um, you know, I told Tommy, I said, you know, when I when we started this podcast, it was almost like God said to me, Eric, it doesn't matter if anybody in the entire world watches the podcast. Yeah, you're gonna have uh uh some stories uh and a legacy that your children and your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren can look back and see what you thought about a whole host of topics, but they also would benefit from the guest and the people that you thought had something important to say. And I would say, Lee, that you are one of those, if you were in the Bible, you'd be a red letter.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:16

Oh my god, I'm gonna cry.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:18

Because in many ways, and I'm I'm emotional right now as well, because we're living in a time when everything in the world is seeking to oppress people and bind them up and make them angry and say that it's hopeless, that you can't be successful in this toxic world the way it is. And as we sit here and observe you having no hesitancy about I know who I am, I know what I was here to do, and nothing can stop me from making that happen. And I think that people right now that might be wondering about can they still hope and can they still dream, will see you on this podcast with Tommy and I, and they'll say, Wow, she doesn't look like she's afraid at all, she doesn't look like standing down at all, she looks very bold and she is amazing, and she's liberated. And if she can be that, then I can be what I want to be as well. And I didn't I didn't anticipate that that would be what we got out of this conversation today, but I just think it looks so beautiful on you, and it's something that people need to see.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:31

I so appreciate that. Although I have to tell you, you know, fear is real, right? Yeah, you move through fear how you move through fear, and I think right now I in talk talking about like just so divisive world, and uh I was out of the country for three weeks, I didn't actually watch US news, I watch British news. No one likes us, it's so hard, it's so hard to see you, you know, and uh yeah, and the um but we don't have to it's the truth that we have to deal with what is what's happening, absolutely, no doubt. It's also the truth that we don't have to put up with what's happening.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:17

Absolutely, that was wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:20

What little thing that I can do, what's the little thing I can, you know, so like everyone can do something, and we also have to. I mean, I think the other piece on this because on entrepreneurship is you also have to work.

unknown 1:20:32

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:32

So how do you live those two things, right? So how do you do it so that um you you're energized? There, I mean, I'm at obviously you can tell I'm an energized person. I I optimize for energy, I drink a lot of cucumber juice, I mean all the things, right? So um, but you have to, if you don't take care of yourself, you got nothing. So you also have to take as leaders, we all have to take care of ourselves as we're learning so that we can pour into other people what we need for them to do to actually make it successful. Because again, like I say to my team, if we don't build time, we got no money. If I got no money, I got no, I can't pay you. If I can't pay you, you're not here. So we gotta like figure this out, guys. Right? We gotta figure it out, even if it's not great. Because we had a client, oh, because I'm sorry, I know I keep talking, who was it like they shifted, they shifted in the last six months. They totally shifted, like they were just, oh my god. And um, we're like, oh, we're in the deep, we're in the deep end. I don't know what the hell happened, and we were trying to figure it out, figure it out, and um, they were uncommunicative, which is very unusual. And in the end, we finally cracked the nut. I'm like, you guys keep doing what we're doing. We're not we're I was in it. Usually I'm not in it with that client, I was in it with them. I was like, this is all great, this is all great work. All your counsel is correct. Look how we're performing against other companies. You've zigged and zagged and accommodated all these things. The um, so we're keep doing what you're doing because nothing, they're not telling you doing something wrong, right? They are acting differently, right? So we take it personally. You need to not take that personally, you need to like let's examine, make sure we we're still doing good stuff, and then they will tell us. And then they finally told us what was going on, like four, four months into this, three, four or five months into it, and we were their guiding light. I mean, they it wasn't me, it was the team, right? We were actually helping them get through this incredibly challenging time in their company, their team, but they never told us, we were just kept moving, right? So you just don't always know, right? But now what I know is that our brand, our reputation is super solid because we worked through their crap and got them to the other side without even knowing it. And that was the standard that the company has. That has nothing to do with Lee coming in to save something.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:01

Right. I'll say my last comment, then I'll let uh Tommy kind of close us out. Uh, but uh I would say to our community that uh this has been a treat today, and I would say that one of the major lessons that Lee has brought to us was the fact that she was really not sure she should tell her dad that I don't want to be attacked. And she did the thing that was really scary before she got home because she just wanted this sort of preemptive that, and uh and her father said, I'm so glad you made that decision. And so everything that then you talked about is that I have to find what I'm really good at and lean into that, and that's what all the research says. Community, that's the message for you this morning is to identify what you're really passionate about, what you're good at, what you're willing to work after, so that when you kind of make those decisions, then all the rest of the noise around you becomes less impactful. Uh, we see you today, Lee, having been in an environment where they uh gave you the freedom to discover your own pathway. Everybody didn't come up in that environment, but they do get this episode of Diversity Conversations with Lee sharing that message to encourage them.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:28

Tommy, again, we had a phenomenal guest today, Lee Careho. Uh, if branding and marketing is not your thing, then lean to an expert. It's just that simple, right? And we have an expert with us today. You have the contact information to reach out to Lee. We want to thank ever each and every one of you from around the world for again joining us on another episode of Diversity Conversations. Take care of yourselves and each other.

unknown 1:25:01

Bye.