ERP047 - Discovering Your Blind Spots w/ Likky Lavji

Welcome to Evolve Radio where we explore the evolution of business and technology. Today on the podcast, I'm speaking with Lucky Lab G about blind spots. Truth is, everyone has blind spots, we have them in our personal lives as well as our work life. Being aware of our blind spots can open up a universe of options for advancing our goals. Liy is a former MSP owner as well as an EOS consultant. He speaks honestly today about his experience as a business owner, as well as his observation inside other people's businesses. This is a great conversation that hopefully gets you thinking about some of your own blind spots that may be quietly controlling your world. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcast from. Also, be sure to check out the web page evolvedmt.com/podcast for show notes, links to my guests and to check out previous episodes. Now let's get started. So, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Todd. Thanks for having me on. Could you just give us a quick intro of yourself? Sure. You know, um, I have been in the IT world for about 25 years, which I sold off a few years back and now I'm focusing on speaking and holding workshops and facilitating sessions and working with executive coaches. Excellent. And um, could you give us a bit of background just on the the MSP that you ran, the IT service company that you ran, size and scope of business? Yeah, so as as everybody else does, you know, the solo entrepreneur, a one-man show for many years, I started that in 1995. Uh, but right from day one, my methodology was always a recurring based model, not because I knew what MSPs were back then or managed services was, but I just needed to make sure I had enough money every month. So I found clients, made sure I had charged enough money so I can cover my costs. That was my business model back then. Uh, but in Y2K, it changed to hiring 14 people and running a downtown office and worked really well. A couple of years later, really realized that more people doesn't really mean more bottom line. So I trimmed it back down to eight people and sold that off a few years ago. But uh, the the premise of our model was always recurring revenue right from day one. So that certainly would have made it easier once the MSP model, the recurring model got hot, there was not much of a transition for you to make then. There wasn't, but I guess the difference was putting some tools in places and in in in in in the systems so that we could actually be proactive as opposed to being reactive and still charging a recurring revenue. Right. Okay. And what led you to sell the business? Um, you know, we weren't really in the mode of selling, but uh, we were more in the mode of acquiring, I was just growing the business, we were doing, we were having a lot of fun. Um, then a company out of Seattle approached us and said, you know, we understand you guys are buying businesses. I go, yeah, we are. He goes, have you ever considered selling? I said, no, not really. So we'll come down and have a have a look at our operations and see if we can work something out. So again, I was enticed, we went down, had a look. Um, they made a compelling story to start thinking about selling. Uh, but when it came down to the 11th hour and the due diligence part, there was a fine line in there that said, um, we'll buy you out, but you've got to work with us for three years. And uh, that was my thing, if I'm going to sell, I don't want to work for somebody for three years, I want to start something new. So I didn't do it at that point, but then I reached out to another competitor in the local area and we did a handshake deal and sold it off. Excellent. Uh, and this is sort of a hot time for M&A and things like that. I'm always curious, do you have any uh uh sort of wisdom or advice that you would lend to anyone that's considering selling their business? You know, um, try to find the right partner, make sure that the culture fit is in place. For clients and your employees. And that's the the the biggest issues that we see now that I'm consulting to other IT companies that have gone through M&As or they're going through those conversations. It's to make sure that the culture is identical or it can be melted together. Um, and the client base as well. Because just because you're you've got a good client base and they have a good client base, doesn't mean they're going to marry up, doesn't mean that their expectations are all the same. And that's that's where you want to start looking at it. Uh, you know, the due diligence on the financials and the revenue and the contracts, those are all things you have to do anyways. But you have to take it one step further to make sure that everything else is lined up. Yeah, I 100% agree. Um, my adventures in M&A and my travels through a lot of IT businesses, culture is an ever present story, uh, sort of underpins all things, I find, the operation of the business, the integration between businesses, you know, the harmony that gets developed in in the staff and as you said, with the clients and and the operation. It's pretty incredible sort of how how broad a scope it is. Yeah, and you know, it's interesting, the word culture has got so many different meanings. Um, I always bring it right down to what's the ownership like, uh, the new ownership, what's the the level of execution from that person and what are they not telling you? And that's what you have to really start digging into. And then you can start taking a look at the culture. Because anybody can tell a good story on culture and you can't really see it until you're actually in it for a few weeks. Yeah, that's. At that time it might be too late. Yeah, 100% agree that we I often describe this as uh uh the interior matches the exterior, you know, lots of companies can put on a good show with uh great marketing and and really uh sexy branding and and things look great on the outside, but maybe if you if you sat as a fly on the wall, things might look a little different on the inside. You know, you're you're bang on. And I I think uh if I had my new conversation new conversation that I have now, which is around blind spots, back in the day when I started consulting to M&A prospect deals. Looking for blind spots in the ownership would have made life a lot easier. So that's kind of what I do now is I start uncovering people's blind spots. Yeah, so that's sort of the the the the main focus for the conversation here. Uh, do you want to maybe describe your understanding of blind spots just to give us sort of frame of reference for the discussion? Well, how about if I go back and express some of the blind spots that I had in my IT company that caused me the grief that I had. So one of them, you know, was I'd get really upset when clients would complain about our service. And I would lose it on our staff. And it came from a place of not trusting the staff. And I could never realize that that's what it was. My staff was incredible, they're incredible people, but there was a point in time when I didn't think they could do the job as well as I could. Which is the number one blind spot for a lot of organizational leaders. But mine came from a different perspective. Mine came from a perspective of when my dad. When I was three years old, my dad passed away. When I was five, my grandfather passed away. When I was 16, my best friend passed away in a car accident. When I was 30, my cousin passed away in a car accident. So trust was very difficult for me. Because I never trusted anybody. And I also had the closer you get to people, they're going to leave you. I didn't realize this, I didn't realize that there was a tie between my past experiences to my actions today. But that was very prevalent to my team and they just felt the lack of trust. So I always had a revolving door. Until I realized that's what was happening. And that's a blind spot that I take to heart because I don't want to be known as non-trusting. I do trust people, but I had this back issue that I never did. So I I would say this is an incredibly common one that I see. Uh, interacting with especially with entrepreneurs, um, you you have the grit, the determination and the effort to to build something. And then once you get to that point where you need to scale it out and start to delegate, I think that that's a huge hurdle for for people to get over. And I would say it's almost a make or break point for a lot of businesses. As to whether or not they're able to sort of push past that. Um, do you think that that that is um something that is really fundamental or or maybe there was some some actions that you saw or some systems that you used to be able to recognize that and be able to push past it? Well, I recognized it because I had a coach mentoring me through this process. And we dug down into my blind spot at that point. And I never we never called it blind spots. We just looked at history at that point to see what's causing all of this. And we had to look at what I what I didn't know. But he could tell that there was a trust issue, we just didn't know where it came from. So we had to dig deep into my history to figure out what that was. So when I do my conversations now, we start looking around what is the the underlying reasons why people are behaving the way they are. So a lot of uh executives are afraid to ask for help. From the fear of not looking good enough, or looking bad, or looking unworthy. So when that comes in, there's a limiting belief in place. We need to find out where that limiting belief came from. So they can acknowledge it and park it and then deal with it. You can never ignore your blind spots, you can never ignore your limiting beliefs. You just need to know what they are so you can move forward. Yeah, 100%. I think that that recognition, uh, building that that trust and and it is a bit of a habit. Uh, once you can build sort of small bits of trust, there are certain ways that you can kind of give people uh enough so that they can justify your trust in them. I think that's one of the baby steps of delegation, I think, is is how much can I trust this person? Can I do this in a very safe fashion and then sort of build trust from there? But I will also say trust is pivotal, like it underlies everything, especially in a in a manager and a staff relationship. Trust is a key component to any type of relationship, which includes relationships in business. So that's a big one, yeah. Well, you know, um, if you think about Patrick Lencioni, when he focuses on the five dysfunctions of a team. And all, you know, let's just talk about IT companies, for example, they just want results. They want to deal with service delivery, want to make sure the customer is dealt with properly. So they're focusing on results, results, results. And what they're doing is asking for commitment from their employees to deliver that those results. But if you take it even further back down, without trust of that relationship between you and the employees and you and the customers. You can't really have deep conversations and conflict. So you have to have the trust to have conflict. And once you have conflict, now you have commitment from the team to deliver on those results. And you can hold them accountable. But we all wanted to go straight for the results and forget about everything else below that. So I always say go back to your trust. And trust is the biggest blind spot that we we come across in organizations. And it's either from a upbringing or it could be from a an immediate past experience that you've had. Lack of uh understanding somebody that you'd lost trust. And that has an effect in your organization in every aspect. Yeah, definitely. Um, you mentioned uh trust with clients as well. Uh, like can you describe some of the situations of either recognizing a lack of trust or a shift in in enabling trust with clients and what that what that allowed? You know, if. Um, that usually happens when there isn't trust within your organization first. So if you're not able to communicate with your team properly, the communication to your clients is not congruent to your message. So you may be saying a deliverable is available tomorrow, but your team is not acting on that. So that already shows lack of trust. It shows lack of commitment from you. And when you start doing that over and over again, there's a trust factor. They don't trust that you're going to deliver what you say you're going to deliver. And that all comes back down to communicating properly. So I always tell our clients, you know, have proper expectation set. And the only way you can set that is learn to get to know each other really well. Build that trust before inside your organization and then also with your clients and also with your vendors. Choose your vendors just like you would choose your partner. Because they are going to be the ones helping you deliver the goods. Don't go for the don't go for the lowest cost vendor because they're not they most likely won't be able to deliver the same core values as as you do. Yeah, 100%. You you mentioned um having conflict, healthy conflict. I think this is a really important point that a lot of people probably don't get to, maybe ever. Um, but a great description that I've I've heard of meetings is a meeting without conflict is not worth having. Which is something that I I deeply ascribe to. And I think what people misunderstand is they they naturally think of conflict as negative. But I think if you have this base layer of trust, then conflict takes on sort of a different mode of operation. And it can be about we're looking for the best thing, it's not that I think that you're a bad person for the for the things you think or the things that you want. It's that you may see things differently than me and we need to come to an agreement about where the middle ground is. That's more what what healthy conflict is. Uh, you I'm sure you've seen similar situations as well. Exactly. And you know, if you take it back a little bit further. Once you have the trust built, you can actually have any kind of conversation. Could be a good or a bad conversation. But there also has to be some groundwork and some framework set around that communication skill. So one of the things I teach is anything anybody says. You never say no. You always say yes, and how about this way or yes. And I don't really understand what you mean by that. So now the conversation is open-ended and you can have direct conversation back and forth. Um, the yes and was taught to me by two incredible people, uh, Michael and Amy Port. And when I follow that, that's changed my relationship with my kids, my family, and my clients. And it's always an open-ended conversation now. Yeah, that's uh brings me back to my uh uh early drama days. Um, that's a big part of improv is never never impeding the progress of the story. So it's yes, and right. Exactly. Exactly. And that's where they come from, they come from a from an acting background. So, uh, having that ingrained in me has really made a difference in the way I do business and the way my clients do business now as well. Because, you know, the whole thing about the customer is always right, yes, and. Right. They also need to be told when they're not able to meet those expectations, but in a proper way. Yeah. Yeah. So not being negative and just pushing back to say no, it's like I understand. Yes, that's true, but also these things, right? It's a different different mode of operation, different form of communication. Exactly. And Todd, you know, we talk about a meeting without conflict. You know, I've I've been into a lot of meetings, I've facilitated a lot of meetings where employees just don't say anything. They just sit there and say yes, yes, yes, and they leave and they feel that meeting was so useless. And that's mainly because the leader is just talking and expecting everybody else to say to say yes, yes, yes. And it's not allowing a safe space for the employees to actually engage in conversation. So that is really key in that conflict. You have to create a safe space to allow for any kind of conversation to happen. And that all comes from trust. Yeah, you see that a lot, the meeting after the meeting. So the meeting wraps up and either people two people stick around and basically talk about all the things they disagreed with but didn't say anything through the course of the meeting, right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Can you imagine how productive meetings were if they were set all set for 90 minutes. And everybody had 10 minutes to talk and we had everything out on the table and you moved on. You know, um, a lot of people don't have 100% of the conversation. They'll have 80% and really not say the last 20% because they don't want to hurt somebody's feeling. Yeah. Right. Get it out in the in the open. But that again, only happens when it's trust. I think you see a common theme here. Trust, trust, trust. Exactly. Yeah. Okay, so trust being one of the blind spots. Uh any other blind spots from either your experience or things that you've seen in working with other folks? You know, um, there's some common blind spots. Things like um avoiding conflict. And that comes from a um a power or or or an authority uh conflict. You're you're you're you're you're afraid of authority. So if that's the case, you don't want to have conflict. Or having hard conversations and some people have hard conversations about money. They can't have those. So they don't talk about it. Um, you know, a sales person going in having a sales conversation, but forgets to talk about money because they just it just makes it really uncomfortable. So now that whole conversation around what's it going to cost me is I'll get back to you and I'll send you an email. Well, that's the worst thing you can do in a sales meeting and just send an email about your quote, your quotes. So, you know, those are some of the things that always happen. Um, another one that I commonly see is value being right above everything else. Meaning, I'm always going to prove myself right. That's it and I'm going to keep on selling, selling, selling that I'm right as opposed to listening to what that you could be wrong. And being vulnerable to say, you know what? I don't know the answer and that's okay. Yeah, I would say that's a big one. Again, for the entrepreneurs, you mentioned it earlier that they they have to be they have to protect their their sort of status or their ego. And don't want to be viewed as not knowing something or not being good enough. Because then that makes them sort of lesser and I I don't think anyone in an organization has that same expectation on them. But they certainly protected on of themselves and that's a, you know, that's that's something that'll get you in trouble if it's not corrected. Exactly. And you know, the other one that's really interesting for me is uh. When somebody's talking about something and I'll just use an example, you know, I can say, you know, my daughter is going to XYZ University. And all of a sudden the person that I'm talking to will say, yeah, but my daughter is also going to this university. Always trying to outdo the other person. Sure. Or having an answer already interrupt you. Having a comment already interrupt, so you're not really listening, you just want to get the answer out. So that's that's one of the key blind spots about listening, being empathetic, being present in that conversation. Um, one of the other ones that are is really key is I can do it by myself. I don't need the help. And that comes from a place of I don't want to look bad, I don't want to look like I don't know what I'm doing. And that usually comes from frontline staff because they don't trust the leadership around them that it's okay to make mistakes. You know, I had a a rule in our office, I said, I have zero tolerance for not being excellent. Now, I remember the first person came up to me and says, so you mean I can't make a mistake and you'll fire me? I said, I didn't say that. I said, I have zero tolerance for not being excellent. Excellence is up to you. What does that mean to you? Giving 110% on everything you do, making sure that we deliver our goods to our customers in a proper way. And if you can't, be excellent in your communication. And that's living up to that standard. But even the word excellence created some drift in some grief in our organization about that. So people have an have a blind spot around all of that. You know, Todd, when you, you know, I think you and I both work from home. But if we had to go into an office every morning, we would be checking our blind spots while we're driving. And this is this is ingrained in us. But as human beings, we don't look around and look for our blind spots. But the interesting part is other people can see them right away. So I, you know, I did an exercise with I created a little inner circle of trusted advisors and I sat them down and I said, I need to ask you a few questions. And the first question I asked was, how do I show up when I walk into a room? And the answer was really funny actually and it's actually I was shocked. And they said, well, Liy. You know, you really want to know? I said, yeah, I do. And they go, okay, well. You show up as a real pompous ass. And I said, pardon me. And they go, well, okay. Let me let me rephrase that. You show up as a pompous ass until you start speaking. Because when you start talking, you're actually warm and kind and fun. But until you start speaking, you're not smiling. So you walk into this room, dressed well and you don't smile. So you people think you want to own the room. So that was a real interesting blind spot for me because I don't want to be known as pompous. So now when I walk into a room, I've got this big grin on my face and I smile with my eyebrows so that I feel that warmth exuding out and coming in as well. Yeah, this is uh someone I'm familiar with as well. Because uh I I've I'm have what's known as resting bitch face. And people will walk up to me and just randomly say, oh, you look like you're having an awful day. I'm like, what? No, I'm fine. What? That's a tough one. Yeah, it is. And but it makes a big difference, ever since I started doing this, the amount of connections and relationships I've built are incredible. And it's no different than me talking, but now I just come I'm more approachable. Yeah. So imagine leaders sitting around a room that look different than they're trying to look. And are they ready to ask that question, how do I show up to my team? And do they really want to know the answer? And if they hear the answer, will they do something about it? Yeah. So that's huge, I think that like asking people that you trust that will give you legitimate feedback. And and giving them the space to to be honest with you, I think is really, really important. This is maybe a good sort of um practical way to look at ways that people can find their own blind spots. I think you mentioned having a coach to to really give you some legitimate feedback and and uh not blow smoke. Um, that's a great way. Are there other avenues that people can leverage to find their own blind spots? You know, um, I I've broken down my conversation around around five ways of finding your blind spots. One of them is ask for your feedback. Ask for feedback. Very similar to how I ask my inner circle. Then look at your patterns. What are what are some of the patterns that you have? So, for example, a pattern would be, how do you react when somebody cuts you off in traffic? Do you flip them the finger or do you sit back and say, you know, maybe they've got an emergency to go to? Which is what are you? So that's an interesting way of finding some of your blind spots. And then what are your trigger points? You know, what makes you happy in life? What actually makes you sad? And what are you out to achieve? And how do you what are you known for at home? What do you known for at work? And then the last two are authenticity and being able to receive. So be authentic in those questions that you're asking. And then be able to receive it. So if you can do all those five, you'll start learning your blind spots. I learn my blind spots every day because I'm open to asking for feedback. And people around me now just know, they call me out on my BS. And I and I call it BS because it really is BS. Right. Blind spots are your own BS that are in your way. Yeah. You know. So if you think about, you know, as you when you were young, your actions and experiences actually went into your mind as a little piggy bank. But as we grew older, our actions and our patterns really are congruent to those experiences from the past. So whatever we did it when we were growing up, it's actually showing up now. And exaggerated, but we don't even know it. We need to dig deeper and wondering why we are the way we are. Yeah. This is something that I identify in technical people a lot. That uh I find there's a high affinity for fairness and being treated with respect among technical people. I I don't know that there's any basis for this, but sort of my my guess about this is that a lot of people in the technical industry grow up as sort of the the nerds at school. They're not very socially adept and they may get picked on a lot. And I think that that carries through into their as as they're older in that they they needed they want to be treated with respect because of the ways that they've been socially abused growing up. Do you think there's any legitimacy to my theory here? I think I think you're you're on. I think there's a there's definitely some some patterns to that. And I and I agree with that. You know, if you think about what people are going through and you look at the technical abilities, there's a certain way that they were brought up. Certain things that they were doing and they are the way they are. And, you know, sometimes I I I'm always told by technical people, well, I'm an introvert, I don't want to be around people. But when you put them around people that are like-minded, they're actually very talkative. Yeah, they open up entirely. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, uh Todd, we've talked a little bit about emotional blind spots. Let's think about a little bit about functional blind spots. You know, um, you look at companies like Blockbuster. You know, they're not around. There was definitely a blind spot in their way that somebody didn't catch. They weren't looking for and they're out of business. You think about um the home phone today. You know, a majority of the Gen X, Y and millennials don't even own home phones. What's the cable company's doing about that? You know, you look at Netflix coming in. How is that going to affect our cable companies like Telus and the Shaw of the world? Are people looking out for that? Sears, what happened to them? You look at um Whole Foods when they got purchased by Amazon, there was a competitive Whole Foods. I never saw that coming. Everybody else around them saw that coming. But that competitor didn't see it and they didn't make an act act on it. So when there's a functional blind spot in an organization, it's actually coming from an emotional blind spot of a leadership. That's not looking openly of what's affecting their organization for growth. And they're not open to that conversation. What's an example of this, um, maybe in in some of the the businesses that you've seen? Can you think you think of an example? Well, uh. You remember Office 365, you know what that is? Of course, yeah. The internet, the internet thing. You know, our the best ones we used to get was, you know, um, I I don't trust the internet. We can't have our email stored on the cloud. We just can't. And some of our staff believe that, but then our customers just wouldn't be open to listening to it. So, you know, you just think about it. An email coming in is coming through the internet already. So being stored on the internet is no different than it come traveling through the internet. Right. And us to explain that was very difficult. Yeah. So that's a blind spot that a lot of people had about trust with technology. Because what's happening, right? So that that's some of them. The other one is when you have strategy sessions with your teams and technical team comes and says, listen, we've got this new technology. We want to we should be looking at because I've got some research on it. But the leadership says, you know what, not right now, we're not ready for this. And all of a sudden, two years go down the road and that technology has become the Office 365 of the world. And then they're still sitting on Novell and they're still sitting on, you know, Udora email or or whatever you want to call it. So those are the things that you need to start looking at and being open to conversation. One that I I would propose is uh is actually around financials. I see this especially for smaller organizations as they're growing. I I find a lot of the owners tend to uh focus primarily on revenue and they don't have a great grasp on what the profit of the business is. They kind of judge, you know, can I make payroll, am I making any money? Okay, thumbs up, we're doing good, right? And not really having a great grasp on on the financials, um, they have they have the capability to do so. But I think in a lot of places maybe they're producing their own blind spot because that ignorance protects them from maybe the underlying story of what those financials may tell them. I see that as sort of something that that I would suggest is a common blind spot as well. I totally agree with that, Todd, and it's it's it's ignorance. It's also greed to me that gets in the way. If I'm if I'm making enough money, that means I can just make more money. And they're not looking at what the costs are behind that or what the actual profit is. And I and I know this first hand. That was me. Um, in uh 20 2010 it was, I did no, 2008. We um, we had a family emergency and I had to basically walk away from my business for six months to take care of my wife. And walking away, I thought we were going to lose, you know, I didn't the money was going to be gone for the year, but when we closed off the year, it was the best year we ever had. Wow. And it came from the relationships that I built with my customers. They all came back and said, you know, Liy was there for us and he's always been supporting us and I know he needed help this year. So all the proposal he gave us, we signed off on it. So my technicians were really busy. So we had a we had a great year. So I got greedy with that, so next year I started hiring more people just wanting to sell more. But that's not what solves it. When I hired the people, I didn't look at the core values, I didn't look at what we were about. And and really share my story on building those relationships. We just hired people to make more money. It was about money at that point. Yeah. And we lost money. You know, HR costs are high. So when you go to 14 people from eight, it's very hard on the cash flow. Yeah. And if you don't have the revenue to match it, you're going to go down pretty fast. That happened to us. We went into six figure six figure debt for a little while until we regrouped and came out of it. But that was a blind spot that was key for us. But one of the blind spots that I found was it's okay to admit you're wrong and you messed up. And ask for help to get you out of it. Yeah. And I reached out to a couple of my suppliers and one of my suppliers came in. And they helped us tremendously by carrying some of our debt for a few months and working through it. But that was all because we were vulnerable with them and they trusted us and they believed in us and they got us out of it. So. So maybe an interesting aside as well, um, this is something that I often challenge the the entrepreneurs that are trying to grow their business and don't have a a managerial layer in place yet. Uh, when you stepped away from the business, how did it function, how did you transfer sort of the the operation of the business? Was that in place before you left or was it a hot handoff? You know, it was a hot handoff, it was in a very quick transition I had to make. But there was trust with the two employees that I had. I didn't need to worry about the company because I knew they cared about the company and the customers. And that's all that mattered. They were our true core values, which is customer first in everything we do. And just give them all the value and things will just work out. Now, mind you, financials were good, uh, we were okay that way. But, you know, it wasn't sustainable to grow. It was a good short-term way of doing it. But we definitely needed middle management to help us grow moving forward. Yeah. Yeah, as I said, that's that's something that I challenge people when they're growing the business. Like if you were gone for a period of time for exactly that type of event, even if you're just on on vacation for two weeks or, you know, someone was sick and you had to step away. You know, what does that look like, who do you hand the keys to? And I think that's that's something that a lot of people don't tend to think about early enough. So that's I guess another blind spot I would I would offer up is what is this thing look like when you're not there, right? Yeah, so Todd, you know, you you go into organizations as well. So I'm let me ask you, why do you feel that ownership doesn't want to have a second in charge? What's stopping them from doing that? I would say it's twofold. One, um, the resistance that I tend to see in a lot of places is uh they want a flat hierarchy. They think that if they start to develop like I I I when I start working with people, I ask, you have an org chart that you can show me? And they're like, no, no, no, we don't we don't need an org chart. This is a flat flat company, we're we're all the same here. And they think of like the the need for hierarchy is somehow like a power structure. And that it's rank and file, sort of a military structure. And that's not it at all. I try to educate them around the fact that we're we're sort of naturally tribal people, tribal beings is the way that our brain is naturally wired. And we need to look for authority and leadership, like who do we look to to give us guidance and to to be able to to model off of and and do those things? And I think a lot of that is is sort of more rooted in in the sort of the the more reptilian parts of our brain than we're maybe aware of. So I think that resistance to developing hierarchy is usually a part of it. And the other one that I would say is right off the top that you mentioned is is that inability to trust. Right, that uh I if I hand this off to somebody else, it's going to be done 50% to what I would want it to be completed at. And I'm not willing to do that. So in the the difficulty that that creates is it it keeps people stuck where they are. Like you'll never scale an organization until you break past that trust barrier and start to hand off and delegate delegate the eight hats that you wear as an entrepreneur. Yeah. And that's that's right, exactly. You know, it's interesting about nobody else can do it as better as well as I can. That's the mentality and that's that's a huge blind spot. But every time I work with organizations to put a second in charge and they've learned to let go. The second in charge actually super exceeds the expectations and takes the company to the next level. And it's just that matter of letting go and working through it. So Todd, I mean, I never talked about how I got into this and it was all from came from me doing. Uh, you know, I'm a sales trainer and a business strategist. I go into organizations and help them take them to the next level. And and help them to sales. And we'd have these conversations, they'd be all excited, pumped and ready to do all the work. But when it really came down to do the work and I'd follow up with them two or three weeks later, the work just didn't get done. And that really affected me because we were about breaking barriers. And if they weren't doing the work, I wanted to find out why. So we went back to our clients and said, listen, you guys were excited about doing this. What happened? And I would hear all the limiting beliefs that were in the way, trust, I'm not good enough. I didn't want to have that hard conversation you asked me to have. You asked me to hire a second in charge and I was worried about money. Well, why are you worrying about money? So all these limiting beliefs were coming into place. So that's where my blind spot conversation came into play. And now when we go into organizations and we talk about the limiting beliefs and the blind spots and clearing and shifting the mindsets. Then we can start actually doing change management and growing the company. It's actually an easier transition at that point. A lot of people go in there and put all these uh, you know, systems in place like EOS, for example. Go in and just start implementing it. And six months down the road, it fails. Because they really haven't done a mindset shift. They've just brought in a process to say, it's going to work. We have to do it. Without really understanding why. Yeah. No, I 100% agree. Like like one of my sort of taglines is uh uh knowledge is easy, execution is hard. And it underlies exactly what you saw there is that, you know, you can get all the systems, plans and processes and build all kinds of tools and whatever else you want to do. But, you know, that gets you at least to the starting line, it still requires you to put in the effort to to move it forward. Right. Yeah. Well, I I see a lot of organizations spend resources on systems, on sales training, on business implementations and ERPs and, you know, uh our PSA tools and RMM tools. Those are great. But if you're not spending any time or resources on self-awareness, none of those tools are really going to work. Because they're all going to be individualistic people and we need to bring it as a team. And then once the team buys into it, it's going to work. Todd, you know the the number one key issue we run into with any technology company is the time entries aren't put into place. Yep. Connect wise is not doing what it's supposed to do. Connect wise sucks. Actually, it doesn't. Connect wise is an awesome tool. It's the people behind it that aren't utilizing it because they don't understand why and what the purpose is. And they're just being mandated to do something and it never works that way. Yeah. We got to shift the mindset to make it actually work. Yeah, mindset shifts, I think that's that's that's a huge one. And I think that that probably contributes towards um what we referred to before around the need for culture. To be different and culture. Like he said, culture is sort of this amorphous term that gets used in a lot of different ways. And if you ask a dozen people, they'd give you probably eight or 10 different answers on what what culture is. Um, but I think it is sort of important to underline that around um maybe how you view culture and how it's related to those cultural beliefs that uh are sort of endemic in the organization. What are the what are the ways that you change those and get people to rally around those behavioral changes or those cultural changes in an organization? Well, you know, um. It it's really it's really actually it is simple. Culture starts from trust again. And we'll we'll go into an organization and do a simple exercise, right? And people will say, we have great culture. I go, great. Are you able to sit around a room and share your deepest problems with everybody? Whether it be work related or personally. And nine times out of 10, well, no, no, I can't talk about that. Right. Well, then you don't have culture. Yeah. You you just don't. No matter how many pizza nights and bowling nights and beer nights you have, that's still not culture. You've got to build that trust so that you can you've got each other's back no matter what. And when there's an issue, you've got their back. And that's at the end of the day, that's all that matters and everything else, you'll get the results that you need to. So, you know, we'll go into an organization, I'll do a simple exercise and say, look, tell each other something that they don't know about each other. Yeah. Like, you know, Todd, tell me something I don't know about you. And when you start telling me these things and people other people hear it, oh, I didn't know that, so like one of the things I share with a lot of people is, you know, I I battled through anxiety. And I I actually had a stutter for 37 years. And. People are like, what do you mean you had a stutter, you're a keynote speaker? I go, yeah, I am, but that that stutter went away when I realized what my what my uh blind spot was. What my limiting belief was. So when you're able to be vulnerable and share and build that trust, that's when culture really comes into place. You know, um, Todd, we get called in from executives saying, listen, my sales team isn't doing what they're supposed to do, my my other teams aren't working the way they are. Nine times out of 10, it's the leader who isn't executing properly. And we'll work through that process with them, but they've got to be open to it. Yeah, 100%. Um, there's a great exercise that I like around um being vulnerable. And and that breaking down those barriers is called the stinky fish exercise. You ever heard of this? Yes, I have. So everyone uh pulls out a stinky fish from their their bag that they're hiding from everybody else. Describes it and let's everyone else talk about it. Yeah, that's uh. It's a great tool, but like you said, it's, you know, it's not always you can propose those things and people all of a sudden clam up and go, I don't know, that sounds kind of dangerous. But it speaks to exactly, you know, the I have a blog post around this around what creates a really uh high performance, uh high engagement team. And the number one thing that Google spent years researching all of their teams and determined what the number one, the sort of the top five factors for a successful team were. And the number one thing was psychological safety. Which speaks exactly to that. And is underpinned by trust. If the group does not feel that everyone else has their back, then they're going to feel threatened by each other, naturally more than rally together and try to combat something else that is in favor of the team. So I think that that's 100% on on sort of what defines that that root of the culture is the psychological safety and the inherent trust amongst the team. Exactly. And that's that's really well put. And the stinky fish or that uh that unknown blind spot, whatever that whatever you want to call it. You've got to be open and vulnerable to share that. Right. You know, I I I'll I'll just say, you know, whoever's listening to this podcast, just sit back and create a couple of people in your inner circle. And just go ask the simple question, how do I show up? And start with that. If we once find out how you show up and what actions and the mood you bring into a room without saying any words. And you're able to listen to that feedback and make a change around who you are, that alone is being vulnerable. Right. And you'll see a small shift and change in that right away. Yeah. Well, this has been awesome. Really fascinating stuff. Uh Liy, so I appreciate your your insights on this. And uh if you like um anywhere that you would direct people to follow you or connect with you on social or other platforms? Well, you know, uh Liyg.com is our is our website. And connected with me on uh on LinkedIn, which is the the best way. Uh look up Liy, L I K K Y, Laji, L A V J I.com. Okay. I'll link to all of that in the show notes and uh once again, appreciate your time, Liy, thanks. Thanks, Todd.