Ascender Principles of Leadership Ep. 83

Welcome to the Catalyst for Growth Podcast, a place where we talk about everything under the sun regarding the journey of the professional salesperson. Welcome the host of the C4G Sales Success Podcast, John Colunas II. Take it away, big guy. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another exciting episode of the C4G's podcast. I'm really excited today because I get spend time with my son and talk about his educational background. But the system that he's designed regarding leadership and to impact others, he's spent a lot of time in his undergrad at University of Detroit, Mercy, Master's degree at Michigan State. Now he's at Liberty for his doctorate, strategic planning and leadership. So he brings a whole wealth of knowledge. I guess I bring the practical aspects of it. But now he's bringing the academic side to it and meshing it, and he's come up with something that I'm excited to share with you today. And it's called the Leadership Principles, the Ascender Pillars, and we're going to talk a little bit about that today, so welcome to right. Thank you. Excited beyond and kind of talk about how these cognitive formation, you know, a sender right there, people are probably wondering what that is. It's actually the mascot of IMG Academy where I graduate from for high school, I mean, it's a makeup mascot, but it's pretty much a superhero and someone that works hard to achieve heights that they hadn't achieved before or that someone hasn't achieved, right? And when we look at those pillars, right, it definitely started a route when I was at IMG. I wasn't the most talented and wasn't the smartest. We had 20 of kids go into idly schools and better schools than where I played at. And so kind of harnessing what I could control in my own grants, right? And that continued on when I went to Detroit Mercy and minor than leadership. And then with Michigan State, that masters of management strategy and leadership. And now working towards my doctor and strategic leadership, it's really understanding, you know, throughout life, our personal relationships, business, and even community relationships. What are the things we can control? I can't control if a rep is having a bad day and throws a flag. Or if who I'm selling, you know, my software in the tech industry too, is having a bad quarter, right, and with manufacturing reps. And they're just having a down quarter and they can't afford to make that spend, right? So what's actually in our control, well, attitude, effort, and adaptability, and how you adapt to situations? And you identify those as the three pillars of the Ascender Leadership Series, correct? Exactly. Yeah. And I think those are definitely the foundation when you talk about more things you control. People can come up with ideas. But if you focus on these, you're going to understand that no one else is the captain of your own ship, and that you're setting the sales and reaching the destination you want to reach and not living someone else's life. Well, we program daily to have tens of thousands of negative thoughts, and if you can make these three principles, really sort of a quarter sum of who you are and to act on them, you're going to display a positive effort or a positive attitude above all the others that you're competing with. And it's sort of a secret weapon of just making sure that you have these pillars in the back of your mind, and that you're exhibiting those every single day, because it'll help you become a competitive advantage. Agreed. Yeah. And I think it's definitely a competitive advantage when you understand, hey, I have control of my own thoughts and how I actually act towards other people in public, in business, and everything overall. And so when we're looking at the pillars, I always like to start with attitude, right? I think that earlier on when I was introducing the Champions series, oh, he said, you know, that's something what you think, right? No, it's separate from emotion, right? It's the attitude that, hey, I could only have the energy of 50%, right? But if I'm walking into the office each and every day and saying good morning, asking people for small wins, you know, and sharing their victories, right, that's really the attitude. Are you going to approach it positively or negatively? And I think that a lot of the times we allow outside situations that aren't connected, maybe it's something going on at home, affect your office life, they're not connected. I mean, yes, people want to talk about the connection between the two. But when you understand, hey, my attitude at the office shouldn't be reflected on situations at home, you know, that's been bringing a more inviting place to work in relationships. And another example, we've all let politics, this tribal politics affect our lives. And technically, traditionally, it doesn't really trickle down to a lot of us, but yet we can watch a news story, we can share in that, and it changes the course of our day. We shouldn't allow that. We should, the choice to approach all a challenge should be with optimism every single day. Yeah. And I think also that's why I wanted to make that distinction between emotion and attitude. When you look at these news stories, what are they trying to invoke emotion? They're not trying to actually provide any substance when you dig through it a lot of the times. It's just trying to invoke that reaction out of you and try to play on your emotions, right? Exactly. Expressing gratitude, right, can instantly change your attitude. And those that express gratitude on a daily basis have a much more fulfilling life and they're much more optimistic. Yeah. One thing I always like to do, especially starting meeting, whether it's a daily huddle or another call with colleagues, I love sharing in the success of others. And I always ask for wins of the day, wins for the weekend, and wins for the week, right? And they can be small wins. It doesn't have to be a huge win. It can be an act of service as a win. But I think having that at least allows me to maintain my own attitude and make sure that it's positive and not negative. As we always talk right around the house that I coach high school down here in Tampa, it can take one kid with a negative attitude to affect the rest of the team. But it takes about five or more to actually turn it in the positive direction, right? Well, give us an example of that. That we see where a negative attitude can affect the team or positive attitude in an example of it. I mean, I think one of the examples that we can all think of then all of the late two, but you look at some of the pro sports teams, right? And how a negative, one negative person on that you can stay as Neymon and Tony O'Brown. Yeah. I mean, that's one, but there's plenty of other examples we can go throughout the years where a team just paint because of how a player reacted either to the media or to teammates. And so I think that when we understand, hey, a ship can be dragged down by one anchor. We need to move forward and try to, you know, have the people that want to keep moving in the right direction. Excellent. Let's talk about the second pillar effort. Effort is a great equalizer, right? You know, when you went down to IMG and they said that you were the worst athlete they were recruiting on the little crocs team, I, not only did that piss me off, but I knew you and I knew if I shared that with them, that you would outwork everybody and you ended up doing that. And that sort of became your claim to fame is that you were a hard working kid and that became into being a hard work, a hard nose player. And it really helped develop who you were on that team and helped you find a role. So attitude or excuse me, effort is the great equalizer. You don't have to be as smart as the most talented, but if you bring it every single day, you know, how did we create, how did we create regal, right? We didn't take outside money. The firms were such so much larger. If you look at these nationally branded firms, I mean, their advertising budget is bigger than our gross sales every single year as a collective organization. So you've got to work harder. You've got to work smarter and you got to have effort at every single opportunity. Completely agree, and I crack up just talking about effort because for the rookie of the year award at Docuphase, the CEO introduced my name as bringing in the old school hard work into new school. So I definitely understand the value of hard work and it's kind of like how I'm putting together my house right now, right? There's been many, you know, long days, I'm a little burnt out from it, but it's starting to turn that corner. So all of that hard work, I mean, within the next couple of weekends here, it's going to be all put together ready for moving and living in. And you know, even if you're not some of the results right now, you have to swing that hammer. You've got to go to work. You've got to make that extra phone call, right? Send that file, well, make sure that you're engaging with people and make sure that you're putting forward the most effort possible that day. You know, it's just not the words we're speaking on this podcast, right, or how we train and mentor brokers at C4G. This is age old stuff, age old tables. Well, remember the tortoise and the hare, right? Consistency beats intensity. Steady effort over time wins. Well, remember that the hare took off like a bad out of hell, right? And the tortoise just plotted along the hare stopped and played games and the tortoise ended up winning. That's what that's what effort is. It's consistent. So, well, I think also on that point too, when you show up each and every day, you're pretty much showing everyone your commitment level, whether it's your fellow advisors, your clients, or who you work with, right? You're showing that commitment through your effort of showing up early, staying like, putting in the extra hours, right? And when you do that, there's not much others can say about you. You might lose consistently, but I believe that there's some wins right around the corner. But if you constantly are putting in the hard work, no one can say anything about how you run your business. Effort shows commitment and such a standard. Yeah. So what's an example of that that you've seen, either in your work life or your professional life? I guess they didn't be the same. And then maybe your family life, consistency. I think overall, the effort, I'll actually take it a different direction with LaCrosse on Team Latvia. There's two, there's a set of twins on Team Latvia, one place, goalie, one place attack. And it's funny. When I've gone over there, they look like completely different players. I mean, if you played the film and took away the jersey numbers, you would think it's three separate, you know, different people each time, but they will, they constantly are sending me video clips with them shooting, doing steps, putting in that extra effort, right? Not many other people are doing that around them. So they decided to be the change and they had a great impact on LaCrosse, earning their spot at the world championships after placing fifth in the European championships. If you would like to be a guest on the C4G podcast, please contact us at [email protected] or 813-454-0557, prime time players only, bring your A-game or don't contact us. Yeah, I know you're, you're constantly working with those guys, it's really cool to see. So let's talk about the third pillar, adaptability and what adaptability means. And when we attitude and effort, right, are the first two pillars, adaptability is the third. What do you mean by that? Yeah, it's not about changing your value, sometimes it's changing your strategy or how you look at something, right? I think A.I. is a great example. A lot of business owners are kind of like, how do I tackle this A.I. problem or how do I tackle the education of A.I.? Well, honestly, what you should do is go to one of your newest hires who's really young and ask them to explain stuff. They probably know a little bit more about A.I. than you do, but then entrust them in saying, hey, I want you to take time out of your work day to educate the rest of the company, you know, have company wide meetings monthly and where they can actually educate their co-workers. I think always trying to understand, hey, you might not be able to jump over that river, but how can we get across? And there's many strategies, whether it's a rope swing or making a raft, right? And so you always have to be looking to change and adapt how your business goes. COVID is a great example. How many people didn't adapt and then their business has struggled because of it? Yeah, so you look at the restaurant industry. How many restaurants just went under because they didn't adapt to a takeout menu, they didn't adapt to a takeout style, and they literally, they're revenue just withered when they, when it was a stay-at-home rule. So you see that quite often on your, on your example of having a young person teach somebody in the office technology and actually allowing that young person to take a role, to leadership over you is you're learning to adapt. I think you and I both can say that Don Carlson cannot be taught anything regarding technology and that anybody in the regal office that's listening to, don't always time teach you Carlson. Yeah, that's just wasted time. It's kind of a no hope example and you're going to run it into some of those as a business owner. Yeah, but you adapt and move on. Yeah, exactly. You adapt and you understand, hey, no one take time out of their day to teach them how to use a computer. That's a very funny story about adaptability, but very, very pragmatic. Well, and I think also when you're looking at adaptability, right, do you want your business to stay the same and do the same year after year and eventually kind of wither or do you want to grow and have see that growth in your business grow through the percentages and revenue and employee count because that's only going to come from adapting. Yeah, and we see a lot of advisors that get to a point where they're, they've become a lifestyle advisor and it works out for a couple of years because obviously their income is where they want it, they can pay all their obligations and they've got a great life, they've got time back on their side, but what happens is clients start doing this crazy thing. They start spending their money or they pass on or they leave for service issues and if you don't have a growth, if you're not willing to adapt and start growing, you're on the bad side, you're in a downslope, you've peaked in your business to see it sliding. We see this happen with a lot of advisors as they're about, you know, they want to go on to their goal in years and they're not thinking about succession planning, they're not thinking about how their business is going to change under their service model and we see them not being able to adapt and they lose, they lose revenue. Yeah, I think one of the biggest rivals to adaptability to is ego. Oh, good point. Some people have that ego where they don't want to take suggestions where it could come from a young person in your organization. I find it almost comical that there's so many high price consulting companies, right? They're going to come into your business and pretty much find the answers within your own employees. So if you're not listening to them now because of your ego, there's almost kind of a right to have that business with or away if you're not willing to adapt. Yeah, and you have to, as a leader, applying these three pillars, the center pillars of leadership, this adaptability pillar, you have to be open to accept feedback. It's not only an ego that perhaps I'm the king and I know about it, but you also have to have a listening ear and heart that you were willing to accept criticism or somebody being able to point out that there's a problem in your business. For a lot of times, we see when we come in as a consultant and Emperor, no close, that the advisor that's created everything and owns everything, people are afraid to approach them and show them where their blind spot is, just like in that old Fable, the Emperor with no close. Well, even a great example is Frito Leo, right, with Hot Cheetos. You listen to a janitor from, you know, different down the graphic. He talked about Hot Cheetos. He presented the idea and now you see that in every corner store, right? Yeah. And just so you build that story out a little bit because that about people are familiar with that. You want to tell a little bit about that? Yeah. So, I mean, at Frito Leo, there was a janitor, Mexican, and he decided that he wanted to create a hotter product, right, of Cheetos. He talked about that spice and he eventually kind of accumulated the knowledge, you know, that's actually flour and everything, and approached fire ups at Frito Leo. And finally, it took off and that's how Hot Cheetos got refuted many times though. It's like you're just a janitor or what do you know? Exactly. Yeah. I mean, he was able to fight through the adversity and achieve something wonderful and now a product we see in our daily life. I love them, but those things will kill you. Yeah. All right. So let's put it all together. Let's tie it all up. Billers, we've got attitude, effort, adaptability, tie it all together with workstrip. Yeah. Well, I mean, again, when we look at these three, these are three things that you can control. You don't have, you don't need permission to bring a great attitude to work through to your family. You don't need perfect conditions to get effort, you know, a great example is a sloppy field, right? If it's raining, you can still go run 100 miles probably. And you don't, and you don't need certainty to be adaptable, right? You can also knock yourself down and hear others out, right? All right. So what are the action steps for the listeners? We've got one or three things that they can do. Again, we always take this podcast. We're saying we're giving them some nuggets that we've learned or we've picked up over our experiences and from other advisors because we get to see an a lot inside a lot of practices. What are three action steps for the for the listeners? Yeah. I think it's starting your day off with gratitude, right? Whether it's texting three people you care about or talking to your co-workers, asking them how they're doing, right, actually practicing that gratitude and caring about someone, taking an interest in them is definitely a way you can start with the attitude. For effort, I think it's, it's pretty easy, you know, you can sit down and reflect over the past week. What areas of your life could you have given more effort for? And try to do something extra if you only cooked, you know, dinner for your family three nights a week. Try to do it for this week, right? Yeah. We always talk about too. It's a sort of a personal beef that train I have that when we hear people they're going to say, I'm going to put 110% effort into something. You can't. There's only 100% effort. And I think a lot of times we must lead ourselves on how hard we're working or what we're working on. And if you do that, if you're one of those people say, I'll put 110 or 1000% into this. Take a really, take a hard look in the mirror and see if you actually are putting a maximum of 100% into something or you're just boasting about half-half-hearted effort. Yeah. And that ego, right? And I think it's important because really when you look at that quote and kind of explanation around it, it's always you're saying, oh, no, well, in reality, you're giving 90%. You've got to give that extra time. And so identify where you're giving 90. And for adaptability, I think you can look yourself in the mirror and say, where do I need to pivot instead of push harder and whether asking co-workers, asking people in the office, asking your family what you can do better in a certain situation instead of maybe just adding a little emotional freak out or just being that ego-driven boss. Who can you talk to and how can you make it better, right? Always look for criticisms and feedback from everyone around you because they know you the best and your own mind can play tricks on you. All right, Charlie, just close this up in two minutes here. This is great. I think this is a very powerful session. Again, we're talking about attitude, effort, and adaptability, closes up. Yeah, these pillars aren't complicated. When we look at them, especially attitude, effort, and adaptability, but living them out daily is what makes the difference between average leadership and great leadership. And to take it even further, it's kind of the difference between a growing business and a stalling business. And it's kind of the difference of the actual things we can control, right? I can control the market. I can't control who picks up the phone when I'm making sales calls, but I can't control if I'm going to make that extra dial, if I'm going to do it with a smile. And hey, maybe if it's not working, I should pivot to LinkedIn. Well said, man, attitude, effort, and adaptability. If you control these, you'll influence not only your outcomes, but the people, your people and the people you care about. Thanks for joining us today, Tre, it's always a blast to have you on the show. Love you. And appreciate all the work that you've done, especially in giving these transformative principles. Again, although not complicated, I think it's something we should think about every single day and we should apply in all of our relationships, because it's not only business, but you're a leader of your family, maybe a leader in your church, maybe a leader in your community. We need leaders in today's world, and you've got a key right here on how to become a better leader with just these three-pinch ascender principles of leadership. So have a wonderful day. Next week, we'll be dropping a new episode of C4G Sales Success. Every Wednesday we drop an episode, we would love to have you, you know, click on, listen, grab a pearl and apply the pearl or nugget to your life and become 1% better in your practice or your life every single week. At the end of the fifth year, you're going to be 50% better. So there's nuggets in what we talked about today. There's principles that can improve your life where I want to apply it. Look forward to talking to you next week Wednesday as we drop another exciting episode of the C4G Success Podcast. Hey, thank you for your time today. We will have another content-packed session posted next week. Please check our website, canalystforgrowth.org, for our legal disclosures on the bottom of home page if you're into that sort of thing.