Episode Transcript
[00:00:23] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Vicki Wright Hamilton, and welcome to Ignite. Are you ready to spark your passion and fuel that leadership journey? This is where ambition meets action and transformation begins. Let's light that fire and keep it burning. And today we're going to do just that. This episode, we really want to talk about the fact that, look, we're at the end of 2024. Can you believe how fast time goes? We are looking at what do we need to do to prepare for change that's happening as we embrace 2025? What are the things that we need to consider?
What should leaders be thinking about? Economy, consumers, customers. All the things that are part of that leadership segment. I'm really excited today to have Ryan Cohen with me today to be able to talk about change. Welcome, Ryan.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Vicki, a sincere pleasure to be back on your show. Thank you for having me.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: It's always a pleasure when you're here. You know, it's like bringing a friend back to the family. But let's talk. I'd love you to share with my audience.
As we're talking about leading in 2025, the only thing we know we can count on is change. We know that. And we have a lot of things that are happening with the new president. We got new economy. You know, we have economy challenges.
People are talking about inflation, interest rates, companies are going to be selling businesses, products. What are the things leaders really ought to be concentrating on as they're looking at expanding in 2025?
[00:02:14] Speaker B: That is a wonderful question, and it's obviously a hot topic this time of year. You're getting people ready to start making new resolutions, both personally and on the business side of things. But what leaders must first do is look in the mirror. If they want to get ready for change in the upcoming year, they have to start with mindset, their personal mindset. In my program where I walk people through the five M's, the first M is mindset. And that is where people have to do it. We have to understand that change is here, change is coming, and change is going to happen again in the future. So we need to adopt an attitude that, that embraces change. Now, again, we want to shy away from changing for the sake of change. But when adaptability calls us to action, we need to be ready to do that. After you adjust your own mindset and you think a little bit more like Napoleon. Napoleon has a great quote where he says a leader has a right to be beaten, but never surprised. Which means the leader's diligence has to be into research and training his troops, gathering the right resources and making sure you are ready for what is coming. You can get beaten, you can take a loss, but you can't be surprised. That's a fallacy that that lures leaders down the wrong path. So brace yourself for this change. Be looking at the resources you need to head into the next year, the development of your staff that you need to gain in order to achieve that next level. Be watching the clients and the market conditions and looking to the future. Do not be stuck down in the daily rut to where you can never get your head up and look out to the future. Adjust your mindset. Looking in the Mirro and then seeking to avoid surprises for your company, your team and your troops.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Well, you know, I. It's interesting you talk about team and skills and development and things like that. I want to talk about that a little bit further.
When we talk about change and investing in our people, you know, it. It takes money, takes money and time. We all know that. What do you do as a leader when funds are limited, but you still got to get skill development done? How do we enable our people to truly embrace. We really need to do this and still get the organization to where it needs to be to deliver?
[00:04:40] Speaker B: I love that it's actually a really deep question, but the question has relatively simple answers. Even though they're simple, it doesn't mean they're easy to execute. Know that limited resources, time being the most valuable of all resources, you never get it back, right? If you spend and lose a little money, technically you can work a little harder and make more money back, but you can never get your time back. So understanding that in an investment in the skill development of your people is a return on its investment. It is exactly that. You have to see the time value that if you take two hours a week to sit down and specifically develop the laid out action plan of skills that you're going to impart. So that's number one. Get a laid out action plan of how to develop and what to develop and then dedicate to that plan. Here at CS Business Consulting, the Shelton Associate CPA and those two companies, we do two hours a week, one hour of planning and development and one hour of delivery. And that's our mentorship program where somebody is always getting developed towards their actionable goals that are written down on an annual basis. Now we do not do them on a yearly. As far as like New Year's resolution, we do it after tax season in the accounting firm. So after tax season, reassess needs. How did you do in your busy season. Here's your bonus and here's your action plan for the next 365 days. The best way to start off that action plan and that development is again, you don't have to Pay for some 5,000, $10,000 conference and course for them to fly off to. You can get right down here saying, me the leader, I'm going to impart my experience and wisdom to you through these regular meetings. I recommend you have a minimum of three goals. Goal number one is the low hanging fruit. You can actually get this easy win and get it accomplished within a week to 30 days. Goal number two is your medium goal and it should take a little more effort, be slightly more complex. Maybe there's a certification or something like that involved. And it should take three to six months and then your final goal should be your six month to one year. It's going to take more effort. Maybe it's experiential. Like you need to lead 10 or 20 meetings by year end and you need to change 15 client relationships to this status. And that takes time and development. But now you have metrics, you have something that's obtainable, you have something that you can check in on the calendar for accountability and you can brace for all of these changes. Now dial that down in a little bit more specific. If you look at the market as a leader, you have a mindset that the attitude is we have a new economy, a new political realm, we have digital assets going crazy in the world right now. The market is mostly up, sometimes down. How do I adapt and adjust? You now can put your goals in accordance to. I need somebody to learn this new realm and you're the person, you're the guy, you're the gal that's going to do it.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: You know, you're right. And not only about, you know, as we start to talk about getting ready for all those conditions, one of the big things that we know is happening today, that we would be. I'd be remiss if I didn't even bring up is AI. And as AI is coming and expanding and doing more and taking more, the, the, the word for some of the employees is fear. I'm scared my job is going to be replaced. I'm scared, you know, how I'm going to be able to prosper and move forward. Well as a leader sometimes AI can do that function. So how do we prepare the organization? As we know, yes, things may change, but you may not be doing what you were doing yesterday because AI is complimenting what was doing and Making it more efficient. But you may be doing something else tomorrow so that we don't have this fear of technology and then people not wanting to embrace it to move forward. I'd love to get your insights on that.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: Great question. So the key word you just said was embrace. Go back to the very beginning of the conversation that we started having. Embracing change is a mindset you need to have. I promise you, if you, in whatever industry you are in, do not embrace AI technology in some capacity, you're going to be left in the dust. Okay? The second component to that is AI is not here to replace humans. It cannot do it. Even if it can do it in some capacity, it is years away from that. You will always need the human touch to massage a relationship. You need the human touch to finalize and verify and deliver certain final products. And it needs to enhance what you do. So go back to that attitude of preparation. How am I communicating very transparently with my people where technology fits in my business, my industry, and specifically on your team and your job role. And we may no longer have to really sharpen ourselves in certain skill areas, but instead understand the syntax that communicates with AI so I can deliver clear prompting instructions to get exactly what we need out of something that can do the work much faster than me.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: And, you know, that's really true because when you think about AI, AI is a memory. It just learns what you do, it gets information. It continues to move forward. And obviously you can leverage that for your culture, your products, your services in terms of as you continue to move things forward. And one of the things I know, as I think about leadership in this realm is that one of the ways we prepare people is that we say, look, I'm going to be honest with you. These three jobs that did this eight hours a day, no, we don't need it. But we're going to upskill, give you skills that you're going to be able to leverage this. And now we're going to take you to the next level, level up as you leverage this to do this different job and capability. So you're learning something, you're growing, you're developing. And it's not this sense of, you know, where we sit and talk about, you know, I go to work and I make everybody else money and, and give them all of my intellectual property, but not feeling like I'm getting fulfilled. And I think that's going to play a large role in people staying at a company. Right. Because change can also be people leaving. As much as, you know, having other Opportunities and being prepared for that. What do you think leaders need to do in order to get prepared for that potential change?
[00:11:02] Speaker B: I think empowering your people is super important. So again, crossing over from AI, if you have somebody that has the fear of AI technology, maybe you empower the person that's hesitant along with the person that's excited for AI technology. You two team up, here's a 30, 60 day free trial with this AI platform. Play with it, plug in these metrics right here and see how it can enhance your position and our company in general. And if I can enhance your position, I can elevate you along the way. So there's got to be a loyalty factor and empowering factor that if I'm able to implement this, a rising tide lifts all ships, not just the main one in the fleet. Right. And so explaining that to your people, you're not just here making money for just me, the big guy in the ivory tower. If I make more money, you make more money. And having that communication, again, fully transparent. And how this is going to play into the vision of the company really transforms culture and people's desire to stay versus leave and take their talents elsewhere.
[00:12:01] Speaker A: And you know, you said some key words there that if I make money, you make money. Number one, you're, you're sharing what you're doing. You said another thing about culture right and getting the culture right because it does impact from a financial perspective. We're going to take a break and we'll be right back. I'm looking forward to continuing our conversation. We'll be right back.
Welcome back. You know, I am one of the things that as a leader, when we begin to talk about change and getting prepared for the next year, I really want to paint a scenario that, you know can be difficult for leaders, but if you're working in a company and you know that your prices are going to have to change, things are going to have to change and you really want to keep your consumer that is supporting you to stay with you. What do you recommend that these leaders do in order to make sure that the authenticity is there, the realism is there so that our customers now understand why we're doing what we're doing and what the reasons are?
[00:13:53] Speaker B: I think that's a really important question that a lot of people struggle with. And the first thing that I want to tell you is to go back to your mindset, is your mindset to get out ahead of these things. If it is, then you're going to get out ahead of, you're going to create Some type of deliverable content, whether that's flyers, emailers, postings on a website and social media. We do a lot of videos for our clients. When there's any type of critical change where we really need to catch their attention, you know, and make sure that they watch it. And so a couple of four examples is that in the tax firm, the accounting firm, IRS and states are changing tax code all of the time now. Right. And so we have to determine, is this a significant change or is this an insignificant change? And anytime there's a significant change, we'll create a little video and a flyer and we'll blast out two or three sequences at least, notifying them the changes that are coming. Sometimes those changes are our pricing. Right. So, for example, we know this whole BOI that came out from FinCEN and even those are, there's an injunction and everything. The principle that just occurred over this last year is important. They made this announcement. It's going to be this highly regulated, highly penalized thing if you don't do it. And so we needed to educate people, so we sent out education. We needed to explain the law, explain the process, and explain the pricing. This is something new that someone else threw into our lap. We now have to bill you for. It's outside of the existing scope. So in saying that language to our clients, they understand. Yes. Three years ago, when I became your client, you could not have agreed to something that didn't exist in the future. And we explained that to our clients one, the first time we meet them again, when we engage them as clients, and then repetitively throughout. So we are constantly looking to get out ahead and preemptively overcome objections, problems, scope creep, price changes, industry changes.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: That's excellent. You know, what that really says is that you do a very good job of communicating. Right. And that communication becomes the key and the thread to our consumers, customers, clients, whatever they may be, to ensure that they don't feel like, oh, my gosh, you're doing this and you didn't let me know, or you waited to the last minute to tell me I couldn't prepare. I didn't, you know, I didn't know my budget isn't ready for this. Now I'm going to have to cut back on services. So it's really interesting in terms of the way you talk about the constant communication and, you know, it's been my experience that when, you know, things like this are coming about at the beginning of the year, if you can get to your clients around August, beginning of September, so that they Understand it's less of a last minute thing. Right. In terms of helping them, you know, to move forward. I really appreciate those insights. So let's give our audience something that they can take home with them. You know, we talked about pivot, we talked pivoting for the next year, we talked about change for the next year and all of the things that that embarks. I'd love to give them a playbook to utilize of things that they can actually do to accomplish those things. Love your thoughts.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: Excellent. So in my leadership paths, I have the Business foundation programs and the leadership lab. And both of them contain an actual playbook that we do, that one works specifically on the leader and the other playbook works specifically on the team. And so what we do is, I want to take you, the metaphor for this is if you've ever seen one of those old engine diagrams where somebody's got like an engine or a transmission or like an old train. And it's the exploded view, right? It's the exploded view of that engine where you can see every nut and bolt and part and crankshaft and everything is all blown up. And you see literally everything is labeled in detail. Our metaphor is that we're going to work our playbook to explode your workflow and your team roles and responsibilities. And we're going to come up with kind of a three dimensional layer for it. You know, what is the actual department, division role that this is being executed? Is this for. Let's go to accounting. Is this a tax need, an advisory need, a bookkeeping need, or an admin need? And so we would assign the. Assign the task need, the type of task. We would assign where it is chronologically in the process. You know, so where does the nut and bolt go in which can get, which gets screwed in first, right? And then we would assign job roles to it, not names, job roles and responsibilities. From there we can take our final A to Z diagram from when we first contact the customer to when we deliver the final product or piece of material. And we have a play by play, literal workbook action plan playbook. And it has everyone's roles and responsibilities where every piece of the puzzle or department or directory or software system is located. And it's literally an exploded view of our workflow. Now, guess what? This takes a little bit of effort the first time you do it, as do most first efforts take the greatest effort. So we bring in the entire team. We list all tasks, projects, jobs, roles and responsibility on a worksheet. On a spreadsheet that we develop, we purposely Identify duplications, restrict funnels and choke points. And then we start assigning roles and shifting roles. Who else can be doing that? So now the leader gets to see the big picture. The team that may be just working in a silo gets to see the big picture. This is how you fit into the big puzzle. You have value. You can now see the mission overall and the vision of where we're going. And everybody gets a ton of clarity, a ton of input. Hey, I can do this, or, you know, I'm admin. I feel like I don't need to be giving that piece of advice out to somebody. Is there a tax preparer or an analyst that can do that? And then we shift, we do that. And what happens is after a handful of meetings and a few hours of effort, we just provided absolute clarity to everyone involved in the firm and we provided absolute buy in to exactly what you are supposed to be and not supposed to be doing and then how it results in the end product. And now it's just a matter of hit the go button and watch the team succeed.
[00:19:56] Speaker A: That's fantastic. And one of the things that, as I think about, you know, leading and moving forward, that I also think is important when you talk about a playbook, are the details that go into the playbook for your staff. Right. You know, we, we constantly are revising our strategies. We're looking at our vision, our mission. We're at what is going to be achievable, what can we do this year? What are we being realistic about? And not setting goals that are so far out that the mind just can't realize it, because we know that mind likes to be positive. And if we make it so far out and we fail over and over again, all we do is hurt the mind and the brain as we're moving forward. So I think, you know, when we began to talk about these targets and what we're going to do, we have to be realistic. Now with that said, doesn't mean you can't have a stretch goal. Everybody can have a stretch goal in terms of what they're going to look for, but really being realistic about each one of those things. So as our, you know, employees, we want them to let them know, here's what the trajectory looks like next year. Here are the economy, things that are really impacting us. You need to watch these, read about them, know about them within our industry. Here are the things that are really affecting us internally. Right. That we have to do. Here may be some organizational internal things that we need to change as we continue to move forward. So those are some of the other things. I'd love to get your insight. Is there anything else that you would add or think about from a playbook.
[00:21:31] Speaker B: To your staff when looking to develop your playbook?
Humans do something very consistently across the board. In corporate America and even in personal goal setting, we actually significantly overestimate what we can do in one year, but we significantly underestimate what we can do in three and five and especially 10 years. And so what happens is I help people do kind of a layer of things. I help them dial in, like you said, reasonable goals and I have them frame their goals with parameters. Okay, this is your fantasy version. If everything works out exactly the way we think, give me your fantasy goal, right? And that's your 12 month goal. I said, okay, now give me your bare minimum. If nothing else in the whole world fights against us, we have to bare minimum gotten this far. So if you land somewhere in the middle, which is very likely, you're going to be very satisfied with your goals, then what I do is I say, let's look at a three year goal. Usually most people, unless it's specific industry or processes, I'll cap my original consultation at a three year goal. Okay? And I'll say this is your three year goal. And I will poke and prod them saying, and it needs to be better than that. It needs to be better than that. You're, you're not giving yourself and your staff and the technology enough credit. Because if you get year one goal dialed in that range, then two and three are going to prosper a lot, a lot better. And I also focus on saying something will get in your way. There's going to be a series of obstacles and hurdles. And listen, life is going to throw stuff at you. You're going to have somebody will make a mistake in an error that cost you money. This is a mistake. Was it malicious? You know, there's going to be some type of other recession, there's going to be some type of other natural disaster. People are going to get sick and quit through natural attrition. Somebody may die, right? You know there's going to be some stuff in your life. Are you prepared to measure your goal against these things and move on? Now, other really good things are going to happen. You're going to have your biggest, fanciest client refer you their best buddy and you're going to get a whole nother thing of revenue that pops in there. So brace for both. Dial your goals inappropriately. Don't overshoot what you can do in year. And by golly, don't underestimate what you're capable of in three.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: I love that process. I love what you're talking about in terms of process of being able to follow. And I think that what goes along with that is also succession planning. Right to your point. Somebody leaves, somebody dies, something happens, you know, because you're right, life is gonna life. Right. Life gets the life in and things happen you have no control over. And you got to be able to pivot and be able to respond when that happens. Right. And then to your point about mindset, it's all about when you have tragedies and challenges. It's how we deal with them and how we're letting others watch us deal with them because that sets the tone and the trajectory of how people are really going to feel. If I trust trust you and you're authentic and real, then I believe, okay, if you say it's going to be okay, we're going to work through this and it will be okay. But when we don't trust and we don't have, that also leads to a lot of confusion, a lot of people saying, I don't really want to be here. I want to do something different and a lack of commitment. Ryan, I have so enjoyed having you back on the show again. I always love speaking with you and always learn a lot. Thank you so much.
[00:25:02] Speaker B: The pleasure is mine.
[00:25:04] Speaker A: Appreciate it. Well, tune in for the next show and where you can what Ignite your fire. Look forward to seeing you then.
Foreign hi, I'm Vicki Wright Hamilton and welcome to Ignite.
Ready to spark your passion and fuel your leadership journey.
This is where ambition meets action and transformation begins. Let's light the fire and keep it burning. I am so excited to have my friend back who always lights the fire and has a lot of burning solutions to share. His name is Ryan Kahn. Hey, Ryan, how are you?
[00:26:31] Speaker B: Hey, Vicki. I am excited because I always love our conversations. Thanks for having me back.
[00:26:36] Speaker A: No problem. I love having a conversation with you as well. I thought as we began to talk in 2025, one of the things that we're always looking on is reflection. What are the things that I did last year I want to change? How can I improve? What do I need to do in order to get better? Well, there's one problem that we all know that at one time in our life or another we experience is procrastination.
And I want to talk about procrastination and understand from your perspective, why do you think so many people fall into the trap of procrastination and moving forward.
[00:27:20] Speaker B: That is a great question. And to really doubly emphasize every single person struggles with procrastination at some point in their life, I would boil down probably there's three culprits, but two primary culprits for procrastination. Number one is fear. I don't necessarily know what I'm getting into. I don't know what the answer or the solution is going to be, or I know this is going to be difficult and kind of afraid of the hard work. So fear is a really big problem. It's a really big component that contributes to us just not getting the job done. And then another one is just the improper prioritization. It's just the inability to say which comes first, which is more important. I don't know what to attack first. So the not knowing or the improper laying out the assignment of tasks and work projects is the other culprit. There's. There's confusion in the unknown. And of course, that also can feed into fear as well. So what we see is, we see people. They either lack a timeline. They either haven't been provided one, or they haven't laid one out themselves. Maybe they don't have defined action steps, or they don't have specific deadlines of when this is due. So without a specific deadline or specific steps to take, we just kind of keep kicking the can down the road and we're going to get to it. We're going to get to it. So here's something that, that's really important. I want people to hear. If you have a designated workload in front of you and you say, hey, I've got eight hours to get this done, you're going to take eight hours to get that done. If you have that exact same workload and say, hey, this needs to be done in the next two hours, guess what? You're going to be able to hustle and grind and get that done in two hours. So as far as procrastination goes, timelines and deadlines are really important because you are subconsciously going to fit the window. So it's up to you to start making the window tighter. That's. That's something that we need to start considering as we move forward. And then the third component is comfort. I'm comfortable right now. I don't want to get out of this current comfort zone into the work, the task, the project, the headache that lies in front of me. So I'm just going to stay comfortable a little bit longer. A little bit longer. The same reason we hit the snooze in the morning. Right? This bed sure is warm and comfy. I'm gonna hit the snooze. Just a few more minutes. Just a few more minutes. Well, that's just procrastination on the basic level. I'm gonna brush my teeth here in a minute. I'm gonna put my shoes on in a minute. And we kick the can down the wall. So fear the unknown or improper prioritization and then battling our own comfort, you.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: Know, And I appreciate that, Ryan. But you know what I also find, And I guess, you know, it's something that I used to struggle with all the time. I procrastinate because I don't like it. I just don't want to do it. These are things that drive me crazy. I just don't want to do it. And if I can just put it off and put it off and put it off, it just makes it easier until I hit that deadline where it's absolutely necessary and I have to do it. You know, in terms of moving forward but not liking a task or not liking to do something just automatically says, oh, push it off, push it off, push it off. You know, So I also find that that is another challenge. Do you agree with that?
[00:30:31] Speaker B: Oh, Oh, I do. And I think it really tiptoes in those two boundaries of comfort. Right. Like, this is annoying. So I don't want to be annoyed right now. I'm going to go back, or I'm afraid that it's going to be, you know, something. That it's going to be negatively received by me. So I want to avoid that negativity. I love that. I think that's a great point you just made. Absolutely.
[00:30:49] Speaker A: So what do you think are some of the practical steps or things that we can do to break down from procrastination and then get started?
[00:30:58] Speaker B: You know, that. That is great. A lot of people talk about procrastination all the time, and then they never come up with solutions. So they literally procrastinate the answers to how to get this done. So one of the things that I tell people is that there's habits you can form. Okay, so this goes to a base level of, let's say you come home and you drop your purse on the counter, or you just check the mail and you throw a pile of mail on the counter, and then you walk and you get distracted with petting your dog or doing something else or going to turn on the music so that you can cook dinner and get it ready, and the purse sits there, and the mail sits there, and things slowly pile up over time. Instead of just putting it away, just put it away right now. Go hang your purse in the closet, open up the mail, throw out the junk mail, Just get it done, and move on from step by step. So that's just kind of a quick thing that you can do is just start conditioning yourself to always keep things orderly. And what I tell my kids is like, you don't ever have to clean your room on a Saturday if you keep keep it picked up all week. So picking up versus cleaning, the deep cleanings are going to be pretty rare if you keep yourself picked up all the time. Now apply that metaphor to all of your life, to your business, to all of your tasks. But one of the things that I really want to emphasize, people, is that if you can define the problem, you can define a plan for that problem. And when you get your plan, you can start getting specific accountability partners and persons in place. You can get notifications to yourself, put on the calendar, put in your phone, start setting reminder saying, I've got to get phase one done by this point, phase two done by this point. And even though there's a bigger project that you're pushing off, you break it up into smaller bites and put them in writing. Once you get that, you have an overall deadline, you have little micro deadlines, and now you're holding yourself accountable. And if you can really bring somebody else, a partner, a peer, a business person into the realm, a supervisor, you can say, hey, hold me accountable on these tasks. In the interview process, a lot of companies say, do you work better, better with or without deadlines? Well, as the human condition exists, we all work better with deadlines in the very few highly creative fields of art and music, okay? Everyone works better with deadlines, okay? And so that's something that I would really emphasize for people is you got to write the plan down. You got to define the plan. You got to write it down. Once you define the problem, write down the plan breaking into action steps, assign deadlines, assign notifications, and assign accountability measures, whether with yourself or another person.
[00:33:30] Speaker A: You know, when we think about those practical steps, you know, it is so logical, right? It's like, oh, my gosh, this is logical. I know how to do this, but it's the routine, right? It takes 90 days to get a routine to start that habit. So you continue over and over. It's like if you're working out or you're starting, you know, on a health kick or whatever, it May be it's like the very beginning. It's like, okay, okay, I'm gonna go, go, go. And it's like. And I slip back into my old habits, my old things that I'm doing, and then get back into procrastination, for example, versus moving forward. And so I think that, you know, it's interesting how you talk about really planning it, time bounding it, et cetera. And I love, because I have to do this myself, is tell enough people to hold you accountable. Tell somebody who's gonna see you be involved with you, who knows that's gonna hold you accountable so you're not slipping. You know, like having that buddy partner, that person that's gonna say, now wait a minute, did you do X today? Did you do why today? That kind of thing. I love that because it is so true that if we write it, we tell it, we say it over and over again that if people hold this account, oh, I can't run away from this. I said I was gonna work out seven days a week and I've only done it four. But I got four people I told. And everybody's comments. Did you work out? You work out. You work out what you work out. So sometimes it's about that quantity of number, how many people do you really need to tell, you know, but depending upon what it is you're really trying to get out of procrastination on. That's true. Can you share an example of someone who overcame procrastination and saw amazing results that you have actually worked with?
[00:35:12] Speaker B: Oh, definitely. So my background, your audience may not know a little bit more about my background as much as, you know, I'm a coach. I'm a former police officer. 10 years, over a decade on SWAT, including SWAT team leader, developing people for high risk situations. Now I do a lot of leadership and business coaching and the largest client base that I have is in the accounting world since that's, that's where I exist in one of my major companies, is that. Well, I could tell you stories about how athletes learn not to procrastinate, learn to become an elite and stuff like that. But I think it's going to hit home a little bit more like this. I had a three partner firm and one partner was exclusively over a division of advisory and tax prep. So there were audit divisions and bookkeeping, payroll positions and, and he was really trying to streamline things. So what we did is we went and we wrote down what the problems were, what was being procrastinated on. But we use the whole team to go ahead and voice their issues and concerns. Not as an attack to any one person, but it's just identifying. Again, we have to define what the problem is. Well, what happened is we saw that the subordinates and the staff were suffering due to the partner's procrastination. Partner's procrastination oftentimes was Fairly valid. There's 10 fires to put out. Well, I'm going to keep ignoring these three fires that appear small to me and keep dealing with these other ones that pop up, up. But the fires grow and grow and grow. And these other people felt invalidated, they felt powerless. And so what we did is we identified that once he emotionally recognized that I'm hurting my people with a purposeful choke point, then we were able to write down steps to get around that. And we wrote down steps on who can hand off some more of this work, the appropriate delegation, who needed to be trained in order to delegate things further. And then after we got that, we gave permission, he took his hands off the steering wheel and he said, I give you permission to hound me, to remind me, to poke and prod me. Accountability partners, multiple layers. So it's not just one person that's a subordinate, but multiple layers. To say, hey, this is one of those fires you told me to tell you is important. Right? And so here you go. Double edged sword is being held accountable. And they were able to drive their operations to an incredibly new level. Because we remove the choke point, everybody is unified around a vision. We had the accountability in place and it just took a process of writing things down, coming up with the action plan, coming up with the personnel that were going to deal with it and everything worked out great and they are having some serious financial and team success right now.
[00:37:46] Speaker A: That's awesome. And you know, what a great story to share as you begin to talk about the importance of recognizing where challenges are and being willing to fix them. We're going to take a station break and when we come back, Ryan, I really want to talk about managing time. We'll be right back.
Welcome back. And if you missed that last session, boy, you definitely want to go listen to it again. You know, Ryan has been talking about procrastination, which we all go through, we all experience, we all have happened over time. But you know, Ryan, I really want to change the subject just slightly because you talked about getting your calendar together, you talked about how to manage when we start talking about procrastination. And so one of the things that happens is we can get overwhelmed by tasks that are happening and people feel like I never have enough time. You're asking me to write it down, but I don't have enough time. So what are your top tips for organizing and prioritizing tasks in the first place effectively so that you do have that time?
[00:39:40] Speaker B: I like that question a lot. And so I'm going to kind of give you a layered response. I said the first thing that needs to happen is communication. And this is a communication that. I mean, because that's always the easy answer. Well, we need to communicate. Okay? I mean, you have to overtly articulate that procrastination is not acceptable.
Purposely choosing to be inefficient is not acceptable. And that needs to be part of the culture of your team on whatever team you are. Guys, we're not going to be the people that procrastinate and push things off. We're going to be highly effective, highly efficient. We're going to be the get the job done type of people. So now you communicate that that is your culture. So now if you're running around procrastinating, you're violating company or team culture. Right. The next thing that you need to do is you need to do what? I kind of mentioned the first one. You have got to write it down. People do not want to spend the time to manage their time. Right. But that little bit of effort in the beginning is going to save a whole bunch of time in the long run. So you're looking at the short term versus long term games. Yeah, short term we're going to spend a little extra time, but long term we're going to save hours and hours and hours every time this process or this task comes up, up. So if you do that, if you write it down and you do what I call explode it, you do one of these exploded maps. What's the workflow? What's the responsibilities? How do we assign things to people at the right point in time? You can then start building a roadmap. You can build that roadmap. You're going to put them in order by complexity or time commitment. I know this is doing 30 days, then this one section as a 10 to 12 day portion of it. Let's, let's tackle that one first so it doesn't get piled up towards the end. Now, I understand that based on certain industries and especially manufacturing, you may have to do something in a chronological order, right. But you can still explode things out. If you have various things that need to be done at once, you assign those out to different people or in a different order so that you can bring it all together and build the car right? And so that's, that's really important. And then you do that based on the amount of time commitment and scale and the team's ability to do that. If you can build that roadmap and you get kind of a three dimensional model of what stage is this in the process, what resources are need to be done and who is appropriate to handle this task. And you line them up like dominoes, you're going to find some serious time management efficiency. But you got to build the map first.
[00:41:57] Speaker A: And you know, it takes time to build that map, right. So you got to also allocate the time to be able to build it and do it right. So sometimes as we say, we gotta go slow to go fast. You know, we have to take the time and invest it in order to really speed up to be able to get that efficiency well as we, you know, look at a day. So, okay, we got this roadmap, we're looking at time, we're moving forward.
There's only so many hours in a day, there's only so much time.
How do we eliminate those things that are time wasters? How do we understand.
You know what, this is not really a good use of my time. This is a waste of my time. This one I should really eliminate. How do we do that? What should that look like?
[00:42:45] Speaker B: Great question. So there's, I'm going to answer this kind of in tears. There's a couple of parts to this. So I'm going to say the, the no brainer answer out first. Most people are saying, what are my time wasters? Well, I would say probably this right here is your number one time waster for most modern humans. So put your phone away, put notifications on silent, download an app for 99 cents that locks you out of playing Build a Block and Angry Birds and stuff like that until after business hours. Okay, that's going to be a huge one if ever. Everyone knows personally as well, like I may not know what each one of my individual staff members time waster is, but they sure do. So we have to be willing to go into confession, right, and say, hey, this is my big time waster. This is what's costing me. Either focus and I'm having to jump back on and off of a task or this is actually eating up my time and we have to be able to confess and say that out loud so other people can then support us. And sometimes it's something like, hey, I'm the highest level tax, preparer at this company and I keep having to scan documents and if I could just not scan documents, I could do 30 more tax returns a week. I'm like, that sounds amazing if you get 30 more tax returns a week. Let's figure out a way to get rid of this time waster. We may even hire an entire new person just to help with papers and scanning and things like that, because it's going to produce efficiency that much. So that, that's a big one for me. Another thing that you can do is if you really need to discover it on a holistic level, you know, globally, is you can do something we call the time audit. What you do is it's going to be nitty gritty. Yes, this is closer to micromanaging. But the nice part is it only has to be done maybe one or two times if people take it seriously. And if you only do it the one or two times needed, then you don't micromanage anymore. But time audit is sufficiently. Not everything gets captured on that computer, right? Even if you have really good management systems and you're using really good technology, not everything is captured on that system. So you're writing down everything from like, hey, I went to the water cooler and I use the restroom and I went to refill my coffee to I spent, you know, 1.1 hour and 57 minutes working on this client's profile. I spent 37 minutes here. Oh, I had to run to the gas station and my energy drink so that I could, you know. And you're going to write down every minute of every day with a maximum of five minute intervals, which means you could be doing one minute intervals. And so if you do a time audit and you pick, hey, we're going to do a Monday and a Thursday this week and then next week we're going to do a Wednesday and a Friday, and then the final week we're just going to hit that Tuesday. You'll have every day of the week spread across three or four weeks. So it's not like you just got slammed during one week or you just had a really empty schedule during the other week and look lazy. But you spread that out, you get your comprehensive time audit and you see, see that really efficient American workers only get about six to six and a half hours of real work done a day in an eight hour day. That's the average. So once you identify your time audit, you're like, hey, I'm taking seven bathroom breaks a day. That's not needed. I'm just wasting time. I don't actually have to go to the bathroom that much. I'm just doing something to get out of my chair. Right. Oh, I don't need to go and extend my, my break by 15 minutes to get an energy drink. I can bring one with me in the morning and just get 15 minutes back every single day. Well, 15 minutes back times 222 days a year is a lot of time. Right. So those time audits can be a little annoying, but they can be really valuable at the same time.
[00:46:14] Speaker A: You know, I love that. And I'm gonna, you know, I like that concept because I do something usually called the time portfolio. And my time portfolio I do once a week. So every Sunday I say I have four buckets that I'm working in something. May be strategy, might be budgets, might be client meetings, might be whatever. But I pick what those, what those buckets are for that week. And what I begin to do is to itemize how much time I'm going to spend in each bucket based upon what's happening that week, because it allows me to make sure I'm not over allocating myself to something because. And spending more time than I need to so that I ensure I can get everything accomplished. And I like how you do the audit of that. So if I do that on Sunday and then I audit what I did the next week, I could make that improvement. So I like that concept. That's awesome, Ryan, in terms of really applying that audit.
[00:47:14] Speaker B: And I was going to add another thing, too. One of the layers that you can do, and this goes really big into my delegation speeches that I give people is, Vicki, if you have something that you are doing regularly and right now, today, without any real training, somebody else in your company can do that and get an 80% accuracy rating on doing a task that you're doing, you need to hand that off right now and just tweak the little training to get them up to 100%. Some people will say as low as 70%. Whatever the percentage is that you're comfortable with your industry, you should be delegating things that people can score a B on. And then you mentor them and train them up to the A range. And they're going to be able to take that off your plate big time. And you're going to realize that that was a time waster for me. I've delegated successfully, and now I'm back moving and grooving.
[00:48:00] Speaker A: You know, that's, that's interesting because My motto is 80 20. Everybody should be using 80% of their strengths. And 20% of their opportunity. Those 20% of opportunities is their growth, what they can do to learn, develop, etc. But the 80% is where that skill set is extremely strong because everybody wants to enjoy what they do. If I'm spending more time working on that 20%, I'm miserable. I'm not happy. I don't like what I'm doing because I'm having to work too hard. But if I'm doing that 80% of what I'm doing, I'm actually enjoying what I'm doing. So the same thing here. Once you identify that skill set or target for someone you can delegate to, you're allowing the opportunity for them to take that 20% of growth. I love how you are putting those together, you know, in terms of making, making that happen so that yes, you're taking care of the time wasters, but you're also grooming and developing other people something. As leaders, we need to always remember number because you can't move on if somebody can't move where you are.
You know, as we continue to move forward, Ryan, in the last minute or so, I'd love to understand where one incident where time management has made a big difference in your personal life that you've been able to accomplish.
[00:49:24] Speaker B: Yeah, so that was, that was a big one for me is I get very limited personal time to myself. I, I give a lot of my time to other people. And again, as an entrepreneur and a servant leader in a business, I have to, I'm here to make their job easier, to make their resources available so they can perform at their best in the family. I'm serving my wife and my children at my church, I'm serving the church as a coach on the team, I'm serving my athletes. So I give a lot of my time away to other people to where I get 30 to maybe 130 minutes to 1 hour to myself every evening. Well, I was getting comfortable in extending those hours to where my sleep was, was suffering. And also that would make me sleep in and start skipping some workouts. Right. And so I started to notice the difference. So my personal thing was I drew a hard fast line in the sand. So I don't care what the day throws at you, you're in bed at 10:30 and you are lights out and unconscious by 11pm and you're waking your butt up at 4:45 in the morning and you're walking in the day gym at 5am Right. And so if I can draw the line in the sand like that and get my time management under control. I'm not eating late night snacks. I'm not doing something stupid on Netflix and watching some show that doesn't matter. I'm sleeping, recovering, building my body, my mind and my health. And then I'm able to give even more because my 80% is now higher. And I can give even more to my other people. And that was a very big personal success story for me. Lost £26, got a lot more sleep. Life is better.
[00:50:52] Speaker A: Well, I will tell you, that's extremely important these days. I've done the same. Put line in the sand. This is my time and I'm going to get it in regardless. And it must be something about that 4:45. Because I get up at 4:45 in the morning too, every morning. Ryan, thank you so, so much. I know our listeners have gained a lot and I can't wait to have more Ryan Khan as we move forward. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode of Ignite. Remember, this is where we let the fire go and continue to burn. See you next time.
[00:51:30] Speaker B: This has been a NOW Media Networks feature presentation. All rights reserved.
