Speaker 1 0:09

Hi, welcome to another episode of leadership lounge as Jack tester. And I've got a returning guest with me, Keith mercurial. How are you doing Keith?

Speaker 2 0:16

A wonderful, proud to be back for a second time.

Speaker 1 0:18

Well, you were here just a couple, three days ago and you had just come off your honeymoon from Hawaii and I want you to know you are really tan then it is really went away even in three days. Keith,

Speaker 2 0:30

every day you're not bronzing you're dying Jack. That's important to know.

Speaker 1 0:35

Well, you look like one of us now. That's , I'll never look like one of you. Okay. So just to let you know. So anyway, now Keith, you um, you know, just for, just kind of setting up what this podcast is about, you know, you've really been involved in more training than maybe anyone in this industry as far as events and number of participants and different companies. And I don't know that there's anyone who's trained more people than you, at least in , in our industry for sure. How many people have you stood in front of and trained?

Speaker 2 1:05

Well, you know, certainly there's some, some folks in there that I've gotten the opportunity to train multiple times, but it has to be, you know, approaching 20 [inaudible]

Speaker 1 1:12

20,000 those point , and these are mostly, and I'll say that you've trained owners, you've trained managers, but a lot of frontline folks, right? A lot of terminations , sales folks, technicians, installers, predominantly the good folks that do the good work in the field. Right. And what I wanted you to share, and this is going to be kind of fun, is mistakes you've seen companies make as it relates to training. So this whole idea that we're going to make this investment and uh, there's, there's some fatal flaws that companies do that make the act of training less impactful that either make it difficult for you as the trainer or make it very difficult for the , the, the participant, the learner that showing up. Is that fair?

Speaker 2 1:56

Yeah, absolutely. And the thought of, I mean, I think we want to probably fit this within your typical format. Otherwise, I'd like a three part series on this for all the flaws that I've seen out there. From a training perspective all along is what you're saying. The biggies. How's that ? We'll , we'll try to try to condense this as best we can. Alright . And so what we're talking about here though is , is sending people to training and having people trained with us, not not just the in house stuff, which has its [inaudible] . Yeah. And that has its own versions. But yeah, I would say, you know , so, so there are, there are few. And the number one thing that we see is this concept of I'm sending my guys off to get them trained. And of course I even use that term, my guys, my girls, we, we , we speak in this language. I've got to send them off to get them trained. And this idea that once somebody has been through training, they're trained and that they're then going to return to the existing environment with no changes structurally, operationally or, or from a language standpoint, a support standpoint. And they're going to now behave in the new way they've been trained to. Okay. And that's probably number one thing that we see is as these, you know, I'm going to send my team off and get them trained and then expect what they learned to be implemented by them. Right. With nothing having changed back in the business that they had learned their previous behaviors. And the reason, I mean there's a, there's, let's, let's dive a little deeper here. One is, is I've seen frequently that owners managers send them away and really have no idea what they even learned. I mean, they don't even go with them. You don't go with them. They don't know what they'd say. They'd send a service system and if they don't know the technicians coming back and technician made sounds pretty good. I learned a couple of things, boss. Yeah . And a progressive owner or manager might bring them in and say, Hey, what'd you learn? Right. And, and you know, okay , so what are you going to do differently? And they might have that much of a conversation with them and it's , and think that somehow that that was enough. Okay. Right. Versus, versus recognizing that in order to truly create lasting change, there has to be an environmental shift as well that's ongoing. And somebody to support their learning, right. Who gets it completely and understands the content like a Maestro. I mean that they have to be that whoever that supporting manager is, right. Has to become an expert in the content. Perfect. I get it all the way they have to they cause they're , they're the ones reinforcing it, right? Cause we're there, you're there with three for three days with this , these people and off they go. And then the managers with them every other day for the rest of the year, you know, and, and you'll see this sort of, this sort of disconnect where, you know, the managers or the owners feel like, well I went to that class once. So that's, you know, I, I got it, I got it. And, and then they expect the same. Yeah . And you know, and we see it all the time. And so, you know, the part of this that changed for me, Jack, I'll tell you, I, I used to actually hate it when managers and owners were in the class as a trainer. I did when I first started training, I used to say, I don't want the managers and owners there because I wanted to create an environment in which these men and women could speak transparently. And I felt like we got false behaviors or false by and to use a term that I can't stand by and you know, from, from technicians and frontline people because they had their own managers and owners there until I saw what a highly functional relationship between managers, owners and their staff really looks like. And I saw teams like, you know, one great example and probably the ones who really lead the way in this , uh, you know, the guys at any hour, the actual, I mean, as big as that company is the owners of the business. Why and Jeremy, right. One of them is in attendance, right , of training with their frontline staff no matter where it is, no matter what. One of the two of them, if not both, are in attendance of the training to support that team and that team member and you know, what they do is they take it to another level of, of daily breakdowns. So instead of that, you know, I sent you off, now you come back, I'm going to find out, right. Debrief on Monday. Right, right, right after the weekend. And you know, and God knows what else took place between then and now. Right. They're there every night taking their team out, discussing, you know, really asking what are the, what are the major changes, what conflicts do you see, what challenges do you anticipate? You don't in fact going deeper than the trainer even gets the opportunity to go to really help arise some of those concerns that might be there, those fears. And subsequently they're really creating an immediate impactful , um, you know, immediately impactful adjustment in belief and in support for that particular person. Right . And of course, becoming masters of the content themselves. Right.

Speaker 1 6:36

And they really are. Yeah . And we see that, you know, I guess the good news, so what's what, what you're saying is, you know, in 2011 2012 when you're training, you kind of had this in soda next door, right? We didn't know what we were doing like we do today, but now we, we see this often. We'd , in fact we had a training class here this week and we saw some, some owners in that room mixing it up or at least observing and being around the class. And that's just so impactful. I agree, Keith. Yeah , I agree.

Speaker 2 7:02

And you know, w that's part of even why we shifted our structure just to create the opportunity for, you know, when we're here in st Paul for managers to come and observe to be supporters, right? But even then there's a huge disconnect between what ops or observation looks like. Cause so many managers show up, Jack and their observer mentality is I'm going to be on my laptop doing my work and checking in to monitor the behavior of my employees. And that's not what it looks like either. It's about being there as an active student so that when your team member turns around and looks at the back of the room, they see someone who's learning alongside them so that they can support them. Not someone who's, they're monitoring their behavior to make sure they're not acting up or acting out of line.

Speaker 1 7:47

Hmm . You know, it's interesting Keith, cause I do see a lot of observation and I want to kind of push on you a little bit here. Please do . All right , cause I, I, you know, I, I get what you're saying that, that if , if a manager is actually as , as a participant in the class that shows, you know, that I'm there, that I'm , I'm going to willing to go through the same or deal, if you will , to the whole training process. As you saw , I'm walking, I'm walking down the path with you. And as a, as a, as an employee, that's an impressive sight to see from your, from your manager. But you know, I , I do see a lot of our managers that are there, they're engaged but they aren't doing some other work. They're in the back of theirs . Sometimes they sit in our lunch room and some people that we've talked about, right. I still think there's something important about that employee recognizing that this owner got on a plane with them, flew here, you know, flew wherever, you know, and, and still was away from their, their life. Really 90% of the time dedicated to them. So I'm, I'm, I'm just, I hear what you're saying.

Speaker 2 8:47

Yeah. And , and you know, first thing you got to think about is what is the nature of the relationship you've built with that employee? Because if that employee knows how hardworking and supportive you are, they're not questioning what's going on, you know ? Yeah . But, but Jack, I'm telling you I can't, I mean, th the, when you see the scrolling on the, on the phone and you know that there's just nothing productive that's a part of that. Or you see, you know, a group exercise and there's three separate observers, they're all just doing their own thing. These are moments that do tell it. They send, as you've talked about micro messages about what is my intent and being there . And , um, you know, and so, so when we watch, so what I'm saying is I'm watching the folks in the back of the room and I share with observers before class starts, when we've got observers there say, look, I'm going to ask you to be active participants back here at this table. Meaning that when we do an individual exercise, do it. You do, and then compare your answers to the teams. And when, when I asked for a group exercise, you all have the conversation back here. And when it's time to skill practice, get your butts up in skill practice. Don't just sit there and certainly don't go lurk on your employees, checking in on them instead of going and doing that work yourself. So, okay , so that's a fair point. And I'm not saying that it's gotta be 100% of the time every time, but the more engaged that manager is, the more of a sign of support they're demonstrating to their, their employees who are in the room. Fair enough. Yeah. No, but good challenge. Thank you. Yeah ,

Speaker 1 10:11

I get it. I get it. So that's, that's something you've seen right? You have to send them away to get trained. Well and then coming back and not having an environment that supports was learned

Speaker 2 10:20

flight. This jet , cause we're going to , you know, just operationally, right? We're going to send them off and , and teach them how to slow down and explore the situation, you know, and service system. And then the guy's going to go back and have six phone, six calls waiting for him there . There is no service system with six calls a day. Okay. Right. That's an old TNM shop that's just turning and burn and doing one task and getting out of there. And so if there's not an operational level of support, then the behavior is not going to stick either. And again, if they're not there to learn what's being taught, they're not even going to be aware that that's going to be a differential. Right . When they come back. And this is about all facets of the business working together.

Speaker 1 10:55

Right. And of course, you know the challenges you , you've , you know that we have different classes that that touch all the technician, right? Was call center the way we take a call and dispatch for sure a service management and all this stuff kind of linked . So it's, it's kinda like the, the, the manager really has to be a student of all that, honestly. Right? 100%. Yeah. It's not just, all right, I'm gonna go serve a system. I got it and I'm going to send my dispatch related dispatch. No , you better. You better go there too, if that's what , if you're really gonna to own this, right? As a, as a leader in the business, you've got to be a student. It's not that hard. You know, this is, this is really just a business model. I'm going to decide, I'm going to decide to , to own the business model. And if you're running a business, you gotta own it right from , from the, when the phone rings to the end, you got to own the whole thing.

Speaker 2 11:40

Mark urban Beck was just here from , uh , from George Brazil. And I said, which class are you? And he said, well, I've already done electrical sales. He said, I'm taking dispatch. He said, this is one of the last ones that I haven't gotten to said . I think it's my job to get to every class. Literally just had that conversation with them three days ago. Oh , very cool. So, you know, that's the mentality is I've got to become at least a high level expert in all of these things.

Speaker 1 12:01

Yeah. Well, you know, really if you're adopting any system, let's just say Nexstars and you're on the business, you gotta understand it, and there's just some nuance that a practitioner of a particular skill set , like dispatch is going to know more than you because they're doing it every day , right? There's a, there's an unconscious competence they'll have in that job over time that you'll never have not doing it. But you got to get the model. You've got to get, I, you know, from, from, from the , when the phone rings to when the invoice is received, you have to, I call it the tip of the arrow and you've got to know that whole thing.

Speaker 2 12:36

Right . I love that. You know, and you know, that really ties in. So, so a fatal flaw number one was a send somebody off to get them quote unquote trained and then they come back and I haven't done anything different in my environment to support it. Right. This one kind of bleeds into the next one, which is, which is training is for them, not me. I love that. All right . The owner and manager mentality and , and I'll tell you the statistics bear this out inside of our organization, cause I want to say Jack , these are rough numbers. I should , I should have reviewed them. I want to say 80 plus percent of our members participate in frontline training. Yeah . And something like 21% participate in management training. Okay. There's this huge disconnect. It should be, it should be identical, right? It should be more and more management. When I say more man, you know, we use this analogy but , but you know, every time I sit on a planet, it reminds me, you know, upon takeoff there's a safety briefing, right? Yeah . And the safety briefing says that in a sudden loss of altitude, that oxygen master going to fall from the sky. And there's a specific set of instructions given to those with parents and they say, and they say , you know, in, in an event of an emergency, make sure to secure your oxygen mask first. Uh , why? The obvious reason being if you can't take the oxygen, you can't be of any help to anyone else. Yeah. Well, meanwhile, we've got a whole bunch of managers and owners out there who are constantly shoving oxygen masks on their employees faces saying, you need to get this. Yeah . And they're not willing to take it themselves. Right. And so without that, because training is about stretching and getting uncomfortable and growing in skillsets and growing as a person. Yeah . And if you're not willing to lead the way, you're not creating an environment which supports this growth concept. And now you're asking people to do as you say and not as you do.

Speaker 1 14:25

Amen. Oh, that's, that's really powerful cause it's, you know, and what happens, Keith, you know, and I'll, I will , uh, use myself as an example, right. I've been at this a long time. And , uh, at a certain point you can't , you are pretty, pretty competent, right? You know, you figure things out, you know, you've had some success and you're hiring these new people and of course they need it, right? They're new, you know, this young person who's 32, Keith, he's only, you know, he needs a lot of training. Right? You, yourself. Um, but it never stops. You know, and I, and I've , uh, I congratulate them . The mindset that you have in some of our other younger leaders have, cause they remind me how important that is. Cause I can get in a wreck too . And so I , I'm giving everyone a pass. It's normal to think this way when you get further along in your career. Um, but the joy comes when you, when you, when you start to mix it up and grow with them, it really is awesome. And so I , I, I've been there. It's key . So you, you were speaking to me when you were saying that and it resonated

Speaker 2 15:20

and I appreciate it. Very cool. And , and you know, I think that's what we do. Jack will misrepresent misinterpret success and competence for why we train, right? Like that. Those are the reasons we train . And that's it's , it's not that, you know, Maxwell talks about this with the law of the law of the lid, that your organization can only grow to your height. Well, look, you know, you said something earlier, you said back in 2011 we didn't really know what we were doing back then. Right ? A comparative compared to now, and I promise you seven years from now we're going to say the same hundred percent thing, right? But the reason is because we keep going out and finding out what we don't know, right? You know that which we don't know. We don't know. And so each time we , we, you know , come across a new speaker and new training program, push ourselves into a new area of discomfort. We find a new breakthrough, right ? And, and I'm telling you, it just keeps humbling us because right back in 2011 I would have told you on a scale of five, I was like a four and a half as a trainer today, I'd tell you I'm a three and I know I'm a lot better than I was in 2011 right. Because I'm just continuing to , to see the gap grow. Right? Right. And so for me personally, as an example of that, I go to training every year in some area of personal growth or development, if for no other reason than to just remind myself of how uncomfortable it is to do the things we ask our trainees to do. That's a truth. That's so true.

Speaker 1 16:47

You know, that's, you know, it's easy for me to walk into a Nexstar training event when I go outside and next door. It's a little weird feeling. And I remember that this is what our members feel like, you know? That's cool. I heard something today around this whole idea that, you know, it says , uh , when's the last time you did something for the first time? Right. As a reminder to yourself that that, especially in , I'm not looking at you, I'm looking at me, people my age that you can get a little stuck, you can get a little, you know, I've done this, you can get little tired sometimes. At least you think you're tired, but I don't know that you're, you know, it's funny that people also say the more you grow, the more you realize that you need to grow and it becomes kind of this perpetuating. It's , you know, momentum is really what it is. It's, you know, it's easy to keep something moving. It's harder to get started and once you get started though it goes , goes

Speaker 2 17:35

is that one . And you've always said that. And I think that's so important because the longer I go, if I take a long stretch without going to training, I find myself less inclined to want to do it. That's exactly right. And I think there's another phrase, the more you grow, the less you know, right. And it , and it is that, that discovery of all that was there the percentage of overall knowledge to become more self aware. And I just think it puts you in a different position to ask others to do things that are tough for them. I agree. Because when you send a technician off to training or a CSR off to training, that is monumental for a lot of technicians. It might be the first time they've been on a plane, quite literally. I know that, I mean, the first time they'd been sent to a training, we talked in the last episode about, you know, the kind of the, the insecurity that comes around school for so many of our texts or, or maybe CSRs and dispatchers too . And now it's like, Hey, I'm going to send you to this school to tell you how to do the thing that you're doing right now better. Right. And which probably means that the message I'm hearing as a technician is I'm not doing it well enough. Right ? Right. And what I'm doing isn't working, you know? And so the whole mentality around training is we send people to training who need it, right ? And if an owner is not going to training consistently, if a manager's not going consistently, they're reinforcing that belief that this is for people who need it, which only diminishes the person that gets sent to training. Amen. That's good. That's good. We've got an environment that doesn't, you know, so I send someone off trained, bring them back to an environment that doesn't support and expect their behaviors to continue. Right. And we got training is for them and not me. Um, and then, you know, number three, especially with onsite training, this would be when you're in a location, in a, in a city, if you're , if the technician's not leaving town to go to training is exactly. So we do God, we're going to do well over a hundred private training events this year, right. Inside of businesses. And so we have these generous hosts. Yeah . And we have hosts who they're faced with a serious dilemma . So let me start by acknowledging this. All right . For us to come in and do a training when you consider the opportunity costs, right? So money out plus money, that's not coming. It's not being run that day of training, say 20 or 30 technicians, it will range into the, you know, 75,000 even a hundred thousand dollar range, right? When you consider lost revenue of, you know, say a couple thousand bucks a day times three days times 30 techs plus the money they spend , right? So what we then see is how can I salvage something along the way. And what typically happens is this is when we have texts running calls after class. So they just [inaudible] . So let's get this is, I can just jump in here. So probably a very exhausting or at least challenging eight hours. And when I leave training, sometimes I'm wiped out. I mean I'm tired and I push him more than eight. I mean, I'll have him there until six six 30 some nights. These guys have really been pushing himself and then they walk out in there, they already have the uniforms on and off. They go to catch call on the way home and you're getting home at 11 o'clock and you know what's funny, I don't think there's a more likely call to be run without applying any of the principles they learned from that call. Right. They just been at training. They're just going to, I'm to get through this as quick as I can. I'll , I'll start applying this on Monday. I mean, because all they want to do is get home and have dinner and you know, they might even have homework to do or whatever, but I just just imagine it's not even just that they get out, you know, typically it's not that they find out they have a call, they were told, Hey, by the way, you're going to be running calls afterwards. And so they spend the whole day, you know, the end of class is getting, they don't know when it is. They're looking at their watches, their texts and their wives. They're trying to figure it and so they're now they spend the whole day and the whole second half of the day dreading the fact that they've got calls to run when they get out of there. Yeah , and you know, and this is just one of the implications of this one , one symptom of it, we see a lot of stuff we see, you know, where for example, a lot of our members have beautiful training rooms now and it's incredible and we still say, don't host it there. Yeah. Because it's anything that's going to continue them in that previous environment. We talked about that we're looking to now transform a culture, but they're still there. Whether they're getting dragged off by the dispatcher to answer a question, right . Their manager grabs them and they come back late and now I've got to have a conversation. Should they pay the fine or not because the manager wanted to talk to them and it's like, you know, or, and then just the mere fact that they're showing up at the same office. Right. We know when our business owners join and they come to a Nexstar event, they're blown away by the experience. Right. And they , they're away from their business and that's scary. But they discovered their business can still run without them, but they walk into a professional environment, they're fed nice food, they're treated like professionals. We have the opportunity to do that with our technicians, with our frontline people when we host these private events. Yeah . And it really makes a difference. You're in the same city. You , you, you'd do it at a hotel. That's our best recommendation because it creates a complete, from the moment that that day gets announced, everything is different. Yeah. That texts going, Whoa, why are we hosting it over here? Right. And then they're getting served food in there and it's not about being in their own shop. It's a shift in environment. And it's like, Whoa, this is a different experience right here. These guys really are really investing in this, you know, and it might not be the same sausage biscuits they get all the time or donuts. Donuts. Yeah. Right. And you know, it's just, it's that break in . It's that little bit of a , let's simulate kinda what, you know, what we as next our owners and members have come to appreciate, simulate a version. It doesn't have to be over the top, but you know that we're running calls after, you know, we're having it in the shop. We got , you know, get your paperwork done in the morning. That kind of stuff. It's like we got to set this as a separate event and make training as important as their work and not more important than their families . Got it. I get it. That's a good way to put it. That's a really good way to put it. Yeah. Very cool. Thank you for that. Okay . Yeah, that's a good one. What else you got? Well, I would say probably the , you know, the ultimate is the mentality around training of Keith. I'm sending a guy, this is his last chance.

Speaker 1 23:51

Okay. See if we can fix them . Okay. Yeah . See if he can fix it . He gets it and the guy doesn't get it and got it. Yet, Keith , he's, he's broken. I need his buy-in. So I'm going to drop 2,500 bucks to ship him to Minnesota. Fix this, get fix him. What happened ? No they don't. I don't imagine they ever tell the guy that, but maybe they do.

Speaker 2 24:15

I think there's, there's enough where it's like, this is your last shot. Right ? I mean I think that happens sometimes there's a little bit, but for the most part, even worse than that, I wish they would tell them that. Right . Cause even worse than that is this side conversation I'm having about, you know, with the , the owner of the manager that say we need you to fix them . And I'm , I'm trying to look at this poor guy, like a human that isn't just some shattered being in front of me and try to remember to, to honor this man or woman and not, you know, not, not be the one that knows that they're on their freaking death.

Speaker 1 24:47

So what happens is, you know, one of the things you, you try to do, I know when you go into training is you're going to assume great intent out of everybody. You're going to assume you have a saying. I can't remember you do your five, five, five, one of your fives is kind of how you're going to view people. Do you remember the wording of that ? You've made it a five, five, five, five, five 20 JAG . Let's have her up the pushups. So for me it's five. Okay. You do 20 pushups. I'll do five jumping Jackson, we'll call it good. So , um, anyway, what , what , what's this , you read something right? And it sounds similar every day, but what is it?

Speaker 2 25:20

And I am, they are statement and it's a , so this is, thank you, I hadn't considered this, but you know when, when we go into a training or when I go into a training, you know, I don't want to leave the quality of the training up to the, the way in which the participants walk in, right? I mean, 80% of first time participants in a Nexstar training would rather be scheduling their root canal than showing up at this thing. And so they walk in, they won't even make eye contact with [inaudible] . Right. And so if we allow that to dictate the quality of the class, we'd have some miserable results. Right. Okay . So, so one of the things that I do, and you know, I take my language, my internal language very seriously, as I write an I am, they are statement and they'll usually sound something like this. You know, I am, I am a vehicle for learning, but not the source. Right . You know , I am kind, patient and committed to seeing these men and women at their best. And you know, these men and women are brilliant, courageous, and in the perfect place on their journey. Yeah . You know, I'm awesome. They're awesome. Today's the day, now's the time. And, and it's , uh , a preparation statement that I make so that when I see someone walk in with that gloom with that, you know, sense of, of diminished self ,

Speaker 1 26:32

maybe a little, a little, maybe a little edge to them . Oh, you know , sunglasses on sunglasses on with the hat, you know, and even the hat backwards and kind of the, you know, the, the shirt, it's kind of weird.

Speaker 2 26:44

Or the guys that really, that re , you know, they , they don't, they don't wear the uniform. They show up in their own, you know, affliction tee shirt . Do you need any, you know, studded jeans or whatever and that cause they want to just show that this is, you know, beneath them or whatever. I mean, you get a lot of these curios is what they are. Keith, she's covered that the last time I want it noted. I never owned an affliction shirt had Norton version of that. Oh, you look good. I always close . I suppose there's something to be said. I didn't, you know, I didn't, if you could subvert the trainer you would have of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and there, there was that. And so, you know, this is, this is the mentality. So I'm seeing these guys and gals at their best. I want to see them as the most whole and beautiful version of themselves they can be. And some people listen to this and they think it's fluffy. I mean this is a big deal because it's what maintains my patients throughout when I'm dealing with some ridiculous behavior to say, to remind myself, look, this is just where this person's at on , on their journey. Right? And I gotta meet them where they are not drag them to where I am and expect them to get me right. It's my job to get them. And so I'm getting Cynthia . But when behind or below the surface is this mentality that this person is broken and they know about it ahead of time . It's like, you know, Keith, keep an eye on, you know, Jackal. And if that's the mentality jacket in training for our businesses that we send people to fix them, right? Or get them right then that's the undercurrent of everything we do around training versus training is a privilege. It is, you know, when we all get to do it because we earn it, we deserve it. And you know, that's where I've seen massive changes. The guys that are at Williams, you know, when I first started going to their trainings , that was the group I had walking in was broken individuals. I mean, and , and they, they, they know that, you know, this was going on inside their business when they, they kind of took back over. They had a culture issue that they needed to, to resurrect and you know, the hucks and , and Jack , um , need them . You know, they, they really looked at it and they went to work on it. And one of the major shifts they made, Jack, was they started, instead of sending people to training to get them trained and to fix them, they started making them apply for training. Okay. And so they now made them fill out an application that said, why am I deserving of attending this training? And these men and women now had to earn the right to be trained. And I'll tell you, I walked in and it was a completely different culture. Yeah. They were excited to be there. Where was out? You're a good trainer though to Keith. They were, well, yeah, the word was out. This is good stuff. It weren't getting sent off to, you know, to some kind of, yeah, terrible boring lecture that was going to kill me . And there's something to be said for that and I that I think once, you know, and I think that goes for all our trainers that once a few people have attended the next star train and they come back and they're like, yeah, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be in the , yeah, there was some good stuff. There was some good stuff you'll, you'll, you'll like it . It's all right. It's all right. You know, and you kind of use it all, but yeah, he has to say face right . Yeah . Oh God. I've been doing most of it already. Yeah . It's a good reminder, you know, but, but you get these , um, these conversations that happen for sure, but I'm telling you what, what the guys with the management and leadership team at Williams did was remarkable because it wasn't just word was out. There was a mass totally get it. And they made training a privilege that you earned instead of an obligation that you were saddled with and no one was being sent to be fixed anymore. They were being sent because they believed in them and they were investing in them. And you know, and I think that's something we're going to talk about at leadership spotlight here, but like even just that language around it, you know, and, and so many inside myself for years and , and so many of us use this term buy and , and you know, we've got to , you got to get guys bought in, you gotta get people to buy into the training. And when you think about buying in, that's it . That's a transactional relationship. And that's not what we want. What we want is we want people invested. And that language matters because when people get invested, it means they're investing for growth, right? You invest your money to see it grow. You buy something to get something back. So, rather than getting guys bought and we want to get our team invested in us, in what we're doing and in their future and when we come at it, the language matters, right? The language really matters because it creates the mentality and it, and it speaks to what our intent is. I get that. And so, you know, people, we don't, we , we want to , we want to invest in our people, not fix them.

Speaker 1 31:30

Right. Well, I want to say something about training Keith, I was thinking about is this whole idea that, you know, you're , you know, as a manager, you know, you're with your people every day. They, they know you, who you are. You know, there's, there's always a , you know, there's, there's a history with a manager and employee and uh, what I've seen the power of the same message from a different messenger is amazing to me. This idea that, you know, we have trainers here, member trainers that actually hire next door to come and train their people because they realize, I don't think they want to say it this way, that that the message is going to be received better from, from Keith or from somebody else that they, and I think it gets back to this idea of kind of how they view you and then how you view them. This idea that we're really, and I've seen the difference because I have been guilty years ago of walking into class and and seeing a couple, three guys and say, this class, this class is terrible. Right? Right away you don't see in a couple MILPERS or you know, whatever. A couple of people acting out and then I start to get aggressive as a trainer, kind of like, well, if you're going to mope, I can out mope . Not I can out bad behavior . You and I found myself night , not recently, but I've really appreciate for anybody going into a , a class to try to teach them content to assume the best, right ? Really get this, I'm going to be a servant here. I'm going to, I'm going to assume that everyone's in a perfect spot. They're not all perfect, but they're in a perfect spot. Right. And then just get in the whole Valley. So you think in your doing training in your shop, and I'm not settling next door, but I'm just telling you if that, if you're the same one that's denying PTO and making them run on call and saying no and all these other things and then you're going to say up , I got something good for you. I don't know that they'll listen the same way as my kids will listen to other people. The same thing I'll tell them and it's just, there's some, there's just a story. Oh you know,

Speaker 2 33:26

that's so spot on. And I'll tell you a perfect example of it cause he was in house as weak as Brad crowds right now. Brad Kraus is one of our highest scoring trainers. He is beloved in class. Oh my God. These electricians, especially, he was here for electrical sales. You know, they love him. Brad has brought me in for years to do private training at his company and he refers to it as a grandfather theory. Right , right. Impact that, that grandpa's saying sometimes podcast. Yeah . So your first or after this but he just did this. Yeah. Awesome. Just tell it. Yeah. Well so exactly what you're saying. That the same message delivered from a benign figure or at least someone that I don't have as much day to day history with has more of an impact than from dad. Right. And so this is, you know what, and you said years ago you can't prove a profit in your hometown. That's from the good book someplace. I lifted that from someplace in the new Testament fair . Yeah . I guess I shouldn't have attached to you please in any way to that quote, but, but you've repeated it to me. Um , you know, and that's the thing that we say is that that next Star's job, because you have a filter as an employee, you have a filter, you put baggage on, anybody that you have experience with and the longer your relationship with someone, the more baggage you put on. So they say something and you don't hear what they said. You hear what you think they meant . Right? Right. And so there's a story that we attached to what happened rather than just hearing what happened with a new relationship or a relatively new relationship, especially with someone who's a trained professional and communication. Right . We have the impact of getting through those filters and not even having to face those same filters. Right, right. Yeah . So it gets heard differently. It gets delivered differently, it gets received differently and you know, next door , his job in training or any third party yeah . Is to transform belief and instill a behavior and then that company's responsibility . Speaking to the environmental element when you come back now is to reinforce that behavior, thereby reinforcing the belief. Got it. So it's a two prong approach. It's not we do it alone and you can't do it alone. We will have that impact because of the grandfather theory, because of the not being a profit in the hometown. Right. You know, coming from outside and so we can, we'll transform belief and instill behavior. That company's job in those manager's jobs is then to reinforce the belief, excuse me, reinforce the behavior and therefore reinforce the belief. That's perfect man. Well, I tell you, this has been a great conversation, Keith, anything like to leave us with, I mean, just my favorite topics . So first, I mean, that's number one. And yeah, I'd love to just say, you know, if, if it hits you and you heard it go sign up for some training, and I don't care if it's at Nexstar for the owners or managers out there, right. Go do something that scares you, that stretches you, that isn't just reinforcing your existing beliefs. That's right. Right. Because if you don't change a belief, you won't change your behavior and therefore you won't get a new result. In order to get a new result in your life, you have to be willing to challenge your belief system. And so in order to do that, it takes an outside figure. It takes somebody who's willing to say not just what you want to hear or not what you've already heard, but that which you haven't heard and potentially don't want to hear. Yeah . Train's not a rally. Yeah , right. Nice. Nice. I just made that up. Write that down. We'll replace the profit in your hometown on the back . They're just not, that's not in a good book. I don't think so. Training's not a rally's . Good. Yeah. So here's the thing I tell you . Um , you do a great job, Keith, you know, you've transformed to help a lot of people make massive changes in their life through the training that you've provided here. So well done. And take to heart these lessons here. You know that, that you know, you do , you've done something , you've trained 20,000 people and I don't know how many different events that is. 200 maybe. I don't even know what that is. Where are you? More than that? So, you know, right . This is , this is the stuff that you've seen come in that has prevented , uh , you've seen it work really well and then you've seen it not work really well. And I just encourage folks to listen to this, have their managers listen to this. Just take this to heart. This is great advice and thank you Keith. I appreciate that privilege. Thank you so much, and thank you all for listening this awesome additional leadership lounge. I'm sitting here with the now untanned Keith material. We will catch you next time. Thanks so much.