Culture, leadership, mindset

Chris Kiefer (00:00.682)

Welcome back to another episode of The Pursuit of Purpose. My name is Chris Kieffer and today I have the one and only Brian Gottlieb, who is a author, speaker, entrepreneur, angel investor, built and sold a company, done a lot of things. But Brian, first of all, thank you so much for being generous with your time and coming on today.

brian gottlieb (00:19.903)

Chris, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Looking forward to this. This is going to be fun.

Chris Kiefer (00:23.53)

So I met Brian at the Pentek Conference, national dealer meeting probably four months ago at this point. And I have to say, I don't know if I have told you this before, Brian, but I feel like in my life, and I know you're a Christian guy and just everything that you're talking about, you have a big family and an entrepreneur that built a big, huge company that was, I don't know what the.

the footprint was, but it was it quite East coast to West coast or a good region of the country?

brian gottlieb (00:57.823)

It was three different businesses. One company was called Tundra Land Home Improvements. Another business was, and that covered the state of Wisconsin at multiple locations throughout the state. We sprung off another business called Jacuzzi Bathroom Model of Arizona. And another business, two locations of Renewal by Anderson window locations. So the three businesses combined were doing about 150 million in revenue with 600 employees. The whole thing though, Chris, I started it in 2009.

in the back of a friend's warehouse on a plastic folding table with $3 ,000 in cash. It was quite the run, it was quite the ride. But then I sold all the businesses to three separate, Jacuzzi acquired my Arizona business to use as a platform that they can open up their own company stores throughout the country. Leaf Home Enhancements bought my Tundra Land business. They saw this as a really great end -to -end process inside of our business.

Chris Kiefer (01:40.202)

Mmm.

brian gottlieb (01:51.711)

They felt they could use in all their locations. They're a great organization. And I sold my Renewable by Anderson businesses to my executive leadership team. So it's super fun to watch them continue to grow. It's fun times.

Chris Kiefer (02:05.002)

Yeah, so what I remember is that you have five kids, six kids.

brian gottlieb (02:11.967)

We have six kids, my wife and I, we're a merged family with six kids, yeah.

Chris Kiefer (02:15.114)

Yeah. So I just think that it's, it's awesome to be with, to, uh, see someone else that has a large family making an impact. I, I am so such an entrepreneurial, like in my, my core, but also just a believer. And I want to inspire and encourage other entrepreneurs that are, uh, people that have the inkling to go, like take the risk and do it. Because I used to feel like the, you know, I've, I came from a, like my family,

thinking like, oh, you know, having a W -2 job is like the safe option. But I actually feel like being an entrepreneur is the most secure job you can have because you get the ability to flex and roll and invent and create and, you know, see what the market's asking for and deliver. And you're not at risk of the boss coming in and saying, you're gone, you know, we have to downsize or whatever, you know what I mean?

brian gottlieb (03:10.015)

You know, well, it's an interesting ride. And by the way, all of my kids have worked in the business at one point or another in different roles. One of my sons is actually one of the owners of the Renewal by Anderson business, but they all grew up in it. It's also a great training ground. You know, the thing that makes this industry special is that everybody's customer facing. They're either talking to a customer on the phone or they're working in a customer's home or they're working a fair or a festival and meeting people and trying to set appointments. So that...

Dealing with people is great. It was great training ground for all of our kids. But it's also interesting, you know, you said that it's a safe job. I think it's interesting that entrepreneurs go through, there are these phases of being an entrepreneur, right? When you're first opening up a business, it's a lot of risk. But then...

you know, at times we get a little risk averse too, right? You have, you start to have employees and you start to have responsibilities and all these things, and we start to become risk averse, which actually holds down the lid of being an entrepreneur. You've got to, you know, it's, it's, that's why so often I think owners unintentionally become the bottleneck in a business because they're trying to manage every single detail because after all, it's their whole, their livelihood is at stake. It's not like just a job. And I think when an entrepreneur starts to,

evolve and say, okay, I have to stay an entrepreneur. I have to stay aggressive. I have to stay growth minded. And that means I have to empower people and help people grow and all of those sort of things. That's when a business really takes off.

Chris Kiefer (04:39.178)

Mmm. Tell me more about that. So how do you did you struggle with that? Like did you have a cap for a while and then there was an aha that then was like

brian gottlieb (04:46.655)

Oh, so probably when I had, I'm going to, I would say we were probably doing about $20 million a year in business. I had, I don't know, I had 60, 70 employees or such. And I remember there was a, there were three people outside of my office door waiting for an answer from me so they can go about and do their job. And I thought, you know what? This is not sustainable. This is not what I want to, what I want to do. And I made the decision at that moment.

The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to remodel my office. And I got rid of my standard desk and I put in a flat slab as a desk. And I decided at that moment that if there's a piece of paper in my desk, on my desk, it's in the wrong place. It means somebody is not empowered to do their job. And that's what set me on a mission of empowering the individuals inside of the business so that they can grow. And that's when the business really, again, really took off.

Chris Kiefer (05:42.794)

So, man, I've got so many different directions to go. I do want to ask you, one of the things that I, this is like fresh for me right now in my own business, but you told the story of the Harley Davidson and just going on a ride. Go ahead and like give your retelling of that because I want to jump off of that, but I would rather you do it than me.

brian gottlieb (06:04.607)

Yeah. Yeah, so in fact, I'm coming to you from a cigar lounge in Arizona right now, by the way. That's where I'm sitting. And yeah, I enjoy a cigar. And I also enjoy riding my Harley Davidson. And I don't like going on the highway. I don't like going fast. I like to putt around country roads in Wisconsin where our summer home is. Sometimes my wife will be on the back and sometimes she won't. But if she is on the back, we'll get to an intersection and I'll say left or right. She'll say left and we'll go left. Or if I'm by myself, I'll...

I'll putt halfway up one road. If I don't like it, I'll turn around, I'll go back again. I might stop and smoke a cigar and then drive some more. And that's great when it's just me. But imagine for a minute if I have 20 other motorcycles trying to follow me, right? And okay, we're going up one road and now we're pulling over and now what? We're smoking a cigar and now we're not going down this road anymore? And that's kind of how business is with people, right? I wouldn't expect...

other people on a motorcycle to willingly follow me ever again if the trip was without direction and without purpose. Business is very much the same way. People deserve to know where's the business going, why are we taking this road and how do we get there and what is their role in accomplishing that journey? And that's where, you know, I love the name of your podcast, Pursuit of Purpose, because...

It is true in business, people need purpose. They need purpose, but then they also need direction. They also need to know where are we going, what behaviors are important to get there, what are we focusing on, how do we win, and more importantly, how do we lose so we know how not to behave.

Chris Kiefer (07:40.394)

Hmm. Because I feel like I have just in the last, so this is, I'm just going to give you this context for, uh, your, your response. Maybe you, this affects what you would say to me, but I got an engineering degree, went into engineering, hated it, quit it six months after my first ever engineering job. Just had a drone, started a media company. I had six, seven employees at one point doing like small video production and marketing. That was for six years.

Then I took a year off as a stay at home dad and my wife finished out a contract. Then I was like, I need to do something. So I took a marketing director job for a painting company, helped grow that company substantially, almost doubled in size while I was there. And that was for three years stint. And then I realized that now I want to do this automation consulting, which is what I do now. So I've had like this entrepreneurial bug that was very, very early on. And then it basically was like not sustainable. So I.

was like, I'm going to just take some time off. My wife had this like nice government contract and, but then I went back into business and I feel like at this painting company, I got to observe and absorb good business practices. It was a very well run company, you know, learn one -on -ones management, hiring people, managing people, leading people, teaching them all that stuff. And also like reporting and the importance of like a budget and like, you know, where'd we go off? Why'd that happen? All that stuff. So that was all great.

Now I'm back in this full on entrepreneurial seat. And for the first, for the last two years, we have been doing these large consulting contracts and the, um, uh, what's the word? The contracts were so large and our revenue for my wife and I increased so much compared to what it was previously that we had, I want to call it the luxury of not being diligent in the numbers.

Now we're hiring people. So now all of a sudden the overheads bigger, a lot bigger, and it's not just us with excess. And so now it's like really like there's a ton of stress on like, oh man, if we don't like have, we need to have what's our sales goal and we need to hit the sales goal. Cause if we don't hit the sales goal, the bank account evaporates so fast, even with large checks coming in because there's not the focus.

Chris Kiefer (10:04.49)

So all that to say the Harley Davidson story hit home deeply. Cause I was like, man, when I was, it was basically me and my wife and a couple of virtual assistants for two years. And it was kind of like, Oh, I, you know, wake up and decide to pitch that client. And then it's like, Oh, okay. We're going to do this thing for a while. And it exactly like what you said. And now there's like, we have a salesperson who's crushing it or he's, uh, still training and learning. But now it's like, now we need to set him free.

but he could make mistakes and not sell the way I would and all that stuff. And then anyways, all that to say, I'm like, man, I've always known the importance of vision and purpose, but now it's like even more, there's more pressure on it. And I feel like our mission is to free you up to do what you love. And that's like, I love that. And I know that that is the right mission, but that doesn't, like if you were going on a Harley Davidson ride and you're like,

We're just gonna see beauty today, Chris, or whatever, you know? It's like, okay, but where the hell are we going? Like, you know what I mean? So I don't even know if I have a question other than like, how do you go from I'm going on my Harley by myself to like, let me take 20 people and all have a great experience on that ride?

brian gottlieb (11:04.223)

Right. Yeah.

brian gottlieb (11:10.367)

Yeah. Right.

brian gottlieb (11:16.863)

Yeah, so it's interesting that sometimes one thing fixes a lot of things in business, especially when it comes to what I would like to call alignment. You know, when you think about where businesses get stuck, they get stuck when there's misalignment amongst the team, when there's misalignment between different departments and such. And all of these things affect the journey. They all create friction in the journey. And how do we empower people? How do we give them purpose? But on the same hand, how do we grow a business?

And look, I'm a big fan of, I think one of the most undervalued and most important functions of a business is the ability to forecast. When a business can forecast exceptionally well, they can do whatever they want. Because if you forecast a 10 % marketing cost, you can grow a nice business. If you forecast a 15 % marketing cost, you can grow a nice business, as long as you hit that 10 or you hit that 15 or whatever. It's when you forecast a 10 % marketing cost,

but you hit a 15 % marketing cost. Or when you forecast $300 ,000 in sales and you only sold $200 ,000. It's when you're inconsistent with your forecasting, it creates a lot of tension inside of a business. Forecasting should not live with just the owner themselves. Forecasting should live deep within the organization. Everybody knowing their numbers, everybody, it does me no good to tell the sales team how they did yesterday or last month or last year. They should report up to their numbers.

They should actively be involved in the forecasting and report up to the numbers because when a business can forecast well, the entire organization is aligned and Chris, like in your business, it's very satisfying and freeing. Otherwise, you just never know. Otherwise, business becomes more of a hope than a true path to execution.

Chris Kiefer (13:07.594)

Okay. So I, that I agree with that. And that's what I had to do when I was at this previous painting company. My question would be, what do you do when, as far as forecasting, when it's like a open frontier blue ocean, like we don't know what's possible. So what's the iterations of like, cause I'm assuming like in your businesses, you like there's like things are murky and you're figuring it out and you're struggling and you're growing. But once you like figure out the equation,

That's what I would say, the forecast equation. Then it's like, give me some rocket fuel and we're gone, right? So what's that, I feel like I'm in that place and a lot of business owners that are in the growing from zero to 20, right? I feel like the zero to 20 is 10 times harder than 20 to 200, but I could be wrong, I don't know.

brian gottlieb (13:57.663)

Well, there are different challenges for sure. But you're right. It's the concept of bullets before cannonballs, like with marketing dollars. You just don't launch cannonballs at a new lead source because cannonballs are bigger and more expensive than bullets. So you fire bullets to make sure you can hit your target. And then once you're hitting your target and it's working for you, then you can launch cannonballs. I think business is about proving things to yourself, proving things in the business. Can we generate a certain lead at a certain cost? Can we convert that lead?

at a certain percentage and can we sell that lead at a certain percentage? Can we install that job at a certain margin? Once we prove it over and over and over again, then it's just a matter of scaling it. In the beginning, even if you're approaching a blue ocean type of business, there has to be something inside of your business that you say, we've got to be able to prove this. We have to prove this model somehow. So that otherwise, because if you're not proving the model, you don't know if you've achieved anything. Because...

We can always come up with a reason why we haven't achieved something. Well, we're trying something new, but that's a really tough ground for a business. So I think every business owner would be, what do you need to become excellent at? Prove that you can become excellent at that with consistency. You know, there's an interesting question. A lot of people want to exceed customers' expectations, right? We want to exceed our customers' expectations.

Chris Kiefer (15:03.882)

Hmm.

brian gottlieb (15:24.735)

I don't want to exceed a customer's expectations because I can't measure that. I want to meet expectations with consistency. That's very measurable. I want my businesses to be very, very consistent. Doesn't mean they're not fast growing, they're fast growing, but we're very consistent and that's about operational excellence. And I think when we focus on that, I think everybody understands their role, their purpose, and they can see the impact they make because they know the difference that they're making.

Chris Kiefer (15:52.202)

Hmm. So, um, and you're saying instead of the, like the, Oh, we want to exceed expectations. That's a, that's great. But it's from most customers are like, cool. That's you did better than I thought. But what is a harder and less and more rare is just like, you did what you said every time. Right. And that's the, that doing that is still clients are stoked.

brian gottlieb (16:14.751)

Right, right.

Chris Kiefer (16:20.586)

And I'm thinking of it as almost as like there's not as much operational waste of like over delivering, you know, or maybe not charging for something. Not that you don't want to over deliver, it's better than under delivering, but you're saying just like focus on how do we hit consistently exactly what we said we were gonna do.

brian gottlieb (16:37.503)

It's a simple formula for customer satisfaction, right? Customer satisfaction happens when performance and expectations are aligned. When the customer's expectations and the business's performance are aligned, the customer is satisfied. When if the customer has expectations here and the business performs here, they're not going to be satisfied. So the challenge I've always had with exceeding expectations is it's very difficult to measure. How much should we exceed them by?

Should we wait to see them or how about we just meet them with consistency? What do we have to be excellent at in order to do that? And again, it goes back to operational excellence, which by the way, in the home improvement industry or in many industries, products, they come and go all the time. And somebody else can come into your market with a similar product. And next thing you know, you have a new competitor. The most difficult thing to replicate is operational excellence.

Because then it doesn't matter what the product is, it's about the customer journey. And if you make that a point of differentiation, I mean, look at Amazon. You can buy things on Amazon that you can get in a lot of different places, but Amazon delivers them immediately. And that's a big difference. And that's something other companies can't do. It's not that they're, you know, it's not that they're bringing you products you've never heard of before, it's that they're delivering excellence with consistency. And that's what makes them a fantastic business.

Chris Kiefer (18:02.218)

Hmm.

Hmm. Um, so I'm curious, you built this, uh, you said it in, at the peak of 150 million in annual revenue. What is, do you like, I feel I, this is an interesting, I'm, uh, my grandpa's 96 and I've been interviewing him every week for the last six months, just asking him about his life and what he learned and whatnot. And it's super fascinating because I asked him what, you know, what goals did he have? Um,

that he still was wanting to accomplish whatever. And he was like, I'm gonna have goals. And I was like, did the, did you and grandma like ever talk about like where you wanted to vacation or like how many kids you wanted to have? And he was like, Nope. I was like, well, what then like that comparison to what today's world is like is insane. It's absolutely ridiculous. So I was like acknowledging, okay, different cultural, like just generationally, this is

crazy. And this is only like he's, you know, my dad's dad, not that far apart. But so, so that's like the framing for this, which is what, when you were in your thirties or however far back you want to go, you're building this business. What goals did you have for the business and maybe personal development, however deep you want to get into this for yourself. But I'm very curious, like, uh,

I feel like I'm bombarded with coaching and goal setting and all this stuff. And I think there's a balance between what my grandpa describes in his contentment at 96 versus what the world is like pushing of more and more faster do, you know, this hurry culture. Um, but I'm curious for you, like, if you reflect back, did you actually sit down when you were at a certain age and say, I'm going to build $150 million business and then I'm going to sell it. And that's the goal.

Chris Kiefer (20:03.146)

Was that ever articulated and at what point, when were the variations of the goal manipulated and improved or enhanced or whatever?

brian gottlieb (20:12.959)

Yeah, I think of it this way. I think of it as the three M's that we all go through, right? And the first M is when we're learning something new, we just want to master our craft, right? We just want to become a master at it. Once we master our craft, I think our next goal becomes how do we mentor somebody else, right? How do we take somebody else and coach and train them and mentor them? And then I think once you've mastered it and once you've gone through mentorship,

Then it's really about how do you make a difference, the third M. How do you make a difference? For me, my goal is never to build $150 million home improvement company. In fact, when I opened the door, my big hairy audacious goal was how do I become a $10 million home improvement company? But when we got to that, I'm like, well, we've got a lot more runway here. So I think that our goals in life, I think they change based on our...

our own personal capabilities, what we learn, what we experience, our pond gets bigger, and then we say, wow, there's a lot more things we can actually accomplish. I think I've accomplished more than I ever thought I would, and yet I have so much more to do now, because that I never even thought was possible.

Chris Kiefer (21:26.794)

So that actually that's in line with what my current like what I am thinking the way this is going to go for me. But I'm wondering like what basically what you're saying is I guess the way I'll state this first, we don't know what is possible. So it's natural for us to throw out some goal that seems like on the fringe of like, I guess I could do it. I have no idea how, but making a $10 million business seems like.

Other people have done it. I could probably do it. And then when you get there, you're like, Oh, I did that faster than I thought. This was like my life's goal. And I did it in 10 years or five years. So let's re aim because I got time. And was that what you're saying? Is it basically it's just

brian gottlieb (22:10.751)

Yeah, and by the way, there's nothing wrong with having a goal that is I'm going to accomplish my goals. And that's the goal. And that's the focus. And that's and everything else from that is a distraction. You know, I think I think that look, I think there why aren't some goals hit? Maybe they're great to have some big lofty dream out there. Right. But but to get there to really have something that's short, measurable, attainable.

where you have a plan on how to get there, it's time and date certain, and you can accomplish it, and then you can celebrate it, and you can move on. And I think that's, look, I think when you do that with consistency, it's kind of like rowing a boat. You know, you wanna get from here to the way to the other side of the lake. Well, you know what? You just gotta row, and you just gotta keep rowing, and you just gotta keep rowing, and over time, over time you get to where you wanna get to. But it's when you stop rowing, or I'll give you another example.

There's this, imagine this big steel wheel, real rusty steel wheel sitting on this spindle right in front of us right now. It's really, really rusty. And we want to get this wheel to turn, right? So we start pushing on it and it starts to creak. And then we push on it a little more, it starts to move. And then we push on it and it starts to move more. And we keep pushing on it and pushing on it and pushing on it. And sooner or later it starts to spin really fast. Now what we're doing is we're hitting our hand on it and keep it going, right? Which spin was the most important? Which push?

They all were, they were all important, they were all required. Where I think most get it wrong is they try to push this way and nothing happens. So they try to push this way and nothing happens, so they try to push it. And momentum is never built in any one direction. And I think it's about trying to build momentum. How do we build momentum for who we truly are and what we want to truly accomplish and what is our purpose in life?

and stay on that course and stay on that path and build momentum towards it. And don't worry if one push doesn't make a difference. It's going to take a lot of pushes and that's all okay.

Chris Kiefer (24:09.546)

Hmm, so that was the business. What about personally? What was your and what is if you've developed this? What was slash is your personal mission and would you say that you have accomplished that or what is the next steps in accomplishing that?

brian gottlieb (24:26.271)

Yeah, my business mission and my personal mission are the same mission. They are the same because my business was an extension of me and therefore they had to align and both my business and my personal mission are to do well and do good. And what that means in business is it means to make a decent profit decently. What it means in my own world is, you know, how do I help others realize their full potential, you know, and how do I, you know, how do I...

help them accomplish something that they've always wanted to do. And because the more I can help impact someone else, the more I'm achieving my personal mission. And that's kind of cool.

Chris Kiefer (25:09.738)

That's awesome. Do well and do good.

brian gottlieb (25:13.023)

Yeah, it's not an either or, it's both end.

Chris Kiefer (25:16.266)

Right. What is the you mentioned? This is another just I love mental models. Super helpful. You said there's operational excellence and then there's or maybe it was blue ocean red. There's blue ocean, red ocean, operational excellence. You remember that model? Walk me through that.

brian gottlieb (25:35.679)

Correct. Correct. Correct. So the example I used was the circus, right? Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. There was a time when people would come in droves to see the circus and pay like seven or eight dollars for a ticket. And they'd see elephants and clowns and in a very smelly environment with that was dirty without good food. Over time, people didn't want to see elephants anymore. They thought that was cruel. They didn't want to pay for.

being in a dirty environment. And when Ringling Brothers business was struggling, instead of changing, they actually created a five ring circus. Instead of having a few elephants, now they had even more elephants. They started giving their customers more of what they didn't want. Eventually, they ended up closing their doors in 2017. Cirque du Soleil came along and said, let's get rid of the elephants. They're really expensive to ship around the country. Let's get rid of the dirty environment. Let's get rid of these tents when you don't know if...

A storm comes through and you can't even put on your show. And let's just give people what they really want, which is entertainment in a nice venue. And instead of charging $7 a ticket, let's charge $200 a ticket. Cirque du Soleil had a blue ocean strategy. They created something where nobody else existed. And so a business has a choice, right? If they want to have a blue ocean strategy, but the challenge with the blue ocean strategy is if you get any kind of traction sooner or later,

going to have competitors. Sooner or later, people are going to copy you. And eventually you have to move to if there's a chart on one side is Blue Ocean. And the other side that the very opposite side is operational excellence, Walmart, Amazon, companies like that that are just, you know, really deliver excellence with consistency in their in their world. Eventually, companies have to move to operational excellence, you can't stay in Blue Ocean forever, because somebody is eventually going to replicate you.

Chris Kiefer (27:32.938)

Mmm. So the...

brian gottlieb (27:33.791)

It's stuck in the middle. Red Ocean is the center. It's where it's all about fighting with the competition. It's all about price wars. It's all about all these sort of things. In a blue ocean and in operational excellence, I would say that you compete with yourself more than anybody else. In Red Ocean, your entire business is, you have a chief executive officer, you have a chief financial officer, you have headquarters, you have the front line. It's very military because it's all about beating the competition.

Chris Kiefer (28:03.882)

Mm, that's awesome. I love that. And you guys, what was the transition for the three different businesses that you owned? Would you say that they all were, were any of them blue ocean businesses at the beginning?

brian gottlieb (28:20.767)

I think there are elements to it that were Blue Ocean, one of which was our marketing approach, but obviously it was replicated, right? I think the concept of installing a shower for a customer in one day where every job we did was done in a day was something back in the day that that was kind of unheard of. And now there are a lot of companies doing it. You know, so one of the things we moved to as an example, because the, what we thought was a Blue Ocean being able to,

put a shower in a day for a customer, when you start to have other companies that can do that too, your point of differentiation becomes not so significant. So how do we install the shower next week for the homeowner? How do we give them an exact installation date the day they buy it? How do you constantly innovate your own business model, always looking through the lens of the customer and saying, how can we create a better customer journey? Is that blue ocean? It's really operational excellence. Is it one day shower blue ocean?

It's really operational excellence. And I think that, again, I think companies try to think that they're trying to find that blue ocean idea when in fact they might be better served because the difficult thing about a blue ocean concept is that it's hard for people to understand why they want it because it's never existed before. And it's a hard sell at work. Companies might be better off saying, I'm not going to try that. I'm going to focus on just making a.

just making my point of differentiation the entire customer journey.

Chris Kiefer (29:52.842)

Yeah, that's absolutely crazy to me that are there other businesses that do that exact install date at the point of sale?

brian gottlieb (29:52.895)

different groups.

brian gottlieb (30:01.343)

I mean, now there are a couple of them, but not very many. A couple of friends of mine do it because we've copied each other, you know, but the very well -run businesses do. I'll tell you that. Correct. Correct. When sales rep sat at the kitchen table after the customer buys, they got an exact, not only did they get an exact installation date, but they met their customer care agent that would guide them through the rest of their project. And, well, you know, let me tell you how it was born by the way.

Chris Kiefer (30:09.898)

and you were able to do that? That's so crazy.

Chris Kiefer (30:24.618)

on the phone or something.

brian gottlieb (30:29.503)

when we were originally starting to grow the business, the number one complaint we got was communication. Communication. And I started throwing call cadences at it, bodies at it, email cadences, just how do we become better communicators? But the more customers we got, the more that objection, that complaint still lingered. And what we looked at is when you have, we were doing 500 bathroom modeling projects a month, right? And that's.

500 new customers every single month coming into your business, every customer had a different expectation on what good communication looked like. And what we realized is what they really want is they wanted their installation date. So really the best way to eliminate the poor communicator objection was to not have to talk to the customer at all anymore. And by giving them an exact installation date, the day they buy and we'll see you on the install. And it just, it was a game changer for our business.

Chris Kiefer (31:26.122)

How far of a time between buying and install on average?

brian gottlieb (31:30.175)

Pre -COVID, 40 % of our projects we were able to install within 10 days of purchase.

Chris Kiefer (31:38.282)

Wow, that's awesome. And then COVID made that harder. Yeah.

brian gottlieb (31:40.255)

Yeah. Yeah. Supply chains kind of messed it up a little bit, but everybody got an exact install date. It's not that we wouldn't ever talk to the customer again. We'd let them know we still were thinking of them, letting them know that the date is great. And it was just a KPI that we tracked. And again, it became very difficult to compete with. And again, it's just a better customer journey.

Chris Kiefer (32:02.122)

Right. I'm thinking the other, I can't remember, this was part of some larger pillars, but the one that jumped out to me the most, belief is transferable. So this is from leadership perspective, right? Would you say that belief is, well, in your life, who would you say believed in you, and then you ended up?

you know, adopting or claiming that as your own before moving forward.

brian gottlieb (32:36.031)

Yeah, well look, my wife is obviously my best cheerleader ever, for sure. But I think I've been fortunate where my mom believed in me too. But what's interesting is, as a leader or as a manager, if you're watching this, it's one of the principles actually in my book, that belief is transferable, both positive and negative belief, by the way. So we can actually believe somebody into existence. We have somebody that's stepping into a new role.

you know, letting them know you believe in them is important, but also adding evidence -based reasoning is equally important. I believe in you because I see how hard you've been working. I know how well you take on new projects, and that's why I know you're going to do well with this as well. I think belief by itself can be a cheerleader, but belief because becomes evidence -based and then people understand because look, let's face it, there are whispers of doubt that fill everyone's ear and...

Chris Kiefer (33:32.586)

Hmm.

brian gottlieb (33:32.639)

And a leader has a unique opportunity to drown out those whispers of doubt with a thunderous sound of belief. And that's a big opportunity for a leader. And, you know, and I'll also share with you that when you think about, you know, in business, you know, going back to what I was speaking on at the event is, you know, is, you know, the role of the manager or the role of the leader. And especially if you're a business owner and you have managers working underneath you, you know, understanding how

How do their actions impact the team? What is really the role of the manager? And when you think about it, the manager is responsible for hiring, firing, promoting, compensating, and training, right? How well the manager does those things affects the mindset of the people on their team, and that affects their culture. So in other words, the managers are really, they're essentially the custodian of the culture of the business. How the...

Chris Kiefer (34:22.954)

Mmm.

brian gottlieb (34:31.454)

people on the team think about their role affects attendance, retention, quality, safety, and productivity, which ultimately defines organizational performance. It's what defines it. So the mindset of the people on your team and how you can influence people's mindset about how they think about their role, their capabilities, and their place in the business is what defines how an organization performs.

Chris Kiefer (34:46.41)

Mmm.

Chris Kiefer (35:01.866)

Yeah, I love that. I think how do you, when you are managing managers, how would you, what's the cadence or how do you make yourself aware of what's going on between those relationships with their direct reports?

brian gottlieb (35:20.351)

Yeah, so if you, what percentage of your viewers are in the home services business? I'm just curious. Okay, in the home services business, if you bring on a new person in a role, if they're working in a call center or working in the sales team or working on customer facing, they're typically trained like crazy before they're actually allowed to talk to a customer. But often managers are put in a role out of necessity. Oh, you have the most experience, I'm gonna make you a manager.

Chris Kiefer (35:25.994)

I would say probably 85%.

brian gottlieb (35:48.319)

And managers need a checklist. They need to know what are the 10 practices of high performing managers. And it's my responsibility as a leader to identify those, teach those, and then also hold them accountable to those. Because as the custodians of the culture of the business, they need to understand what it means to lead with a team vision statement, what it means to empower but not micromanage, what it means to praise performance publicly.

what it means to be KPI focused and accountable. By the way, all this is my book that's coming out. So it comes out September 10th. Forbes is publishing it. It hits airports, bookstores, and libraries on September 10th. Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (36:23.242)

When does it come out?

Chris Kiefer (36:31.05)

That's awesome. Can you pre -order?

brian gottlieb (36:34.559)

Yeah, there'll be an opportunity to pre -order and I'll be happy to come back on it. There will be an audible version of it as well. Yes.

Chris Kiefer (36:36.682)

And is there an audible?

Okay, I listen to so many books, so I'm always like, when it's a physical book, I still, I'm gonna add it to my list. It just means it won't happen as soon as the audio books.

brian gottlieb (36:52.095)

Yeah, so look, hiring the right manager for the right reasons, and it's okay to be wrong, don't be wrong for long. I've made the mistake of putting the wrong manager in a role, and it's important to get off of bad decisions quickly. So.

Chris Kiefer (37:06.154)

But as far as you're saying that the, is it more of like, you know the principles and then you just continue to train the managers and then does it just become obvious to you when like someone's not managing a team or I guess it's like if you're not managing a team, well, the results start to dwindle and you know that the manager is the issue. Cause you're not like sitting in on the one -on -ones with the manager and the director.

reports or asking or do you ask feedback of the direct reports to evaluate their manager?

brian gottlieb (37:36.319)

We do 360 degree surveys. We've always done 360 degree surveys of our managers. So what a 360 degree survey is, is number one, what do other managers say about the manager? And number two, what does the team say about the manager? And what do other teams say about the manager? A 360 degree survey helps with manager feedback. Managers need that feedback so they understand how they can improve. But...

Chris Kiefer (38:03.018)

Mm.

brian gottlieb (38:03.935)

But without a learning mindset, by the way, if you have a manager that does, it's one of the practices to have a learning mindset. If you don't have a learning mindset, you tend to be defensive of any kind of feedback. If you have a learning mindset, you welcome that feedback because ultimately you just want to be a better manager. And that's important. And we want people that can grow.

Chris Kiefer (38:20.202)

Yeah. Yeah. This idea, I just had this other thought. This is, are you a sports guy? Did you play sports in high school or college? Okay. Because I was talking to, cause I'm, I would say I'm not like a big sports fan, but I was, you know, steeped in sports growing up, played basketball and played basketball in college. And I was talking to a friend recently about, um, how do you,

brian gottlieb (38:29.727)

Yeah, I played some sports. I like some sports. Yeah, I'm a crazy sports freak.

Chris Kiefer (38:47.69)

This is a weird analogy, but I think that this, I love using sports analogies in businesses. Um, but like, if you like cockiness versus confidence, like what's the difference there? My dad always, I remember him talking to me about that. Like you need to be a little bit cocky on the court and just like the way you carry yourself and whatnot. And it took me, I would say throughout my entire playing days, I never had like the confidence of a champion. If that makes sense.

like my body language and the way I would carry myself. I was always insecure playing basketball. And I was talking to this guy who was a quarterback and he said, how do you teach? Cause what I was passionate about is how do I teach high school kids like how to short circuit or adopt confidence sooner than maybe I did at say 25, 28 or something like that. Where now it's like, as you get older at a certain point, you're just like, you know what? I don't care what you think.

Right. But as a, as a kid, you care a lot about what everybody thinks and everybody, everyone's insecure. But the reason I think this is interesting is because I would say you can't, you, what, I don't remember exactly how you phrased it, but I've had this, I've never made a model of this, but basically you need somebody else to believe in you before you even know that you can. And then that like raises you up a level in like this confidence ladder. And then at some point,

brian gottlieb (40:07.263)

for sure.

Chris Kiefer (40:14.378)

And what you just said, if you're a manager, you need to tell them why you tell them that you believe in them, but then tell them why. And then I would say is another thing. But then I feel like there's this other piece of, and it's like, it just keeps stacking where I start to see for myself the results in the world. And now I'm like, Oh, this person wasn't just saying it. Like now I can see that I'm good because of blank. And then there's like another tier above that, which I think.

few only get to it. Maybe there's a couple other steps in the ladder of like, I'm going to use the Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant's of the, of the world that it's like, if you, this is the funny thought experiment. If you went into a high school gym and you saw someone, a player walk in the gym the same way that LeBron walks into a gym and he starts warming up and he's, you know, you see him shoot his first couple of shots and he's, he's missing.

your immediate thought would be like, man, he must be having an off day. Like it just clearly he's good. Like, you know, like the subconscious, like way of being of that person is like, uh, I think a prerequisite to being really great, but you also can't be horrible and have that. Cause then you're just delusional. Right? Does that make sense?

brian gottlieb (41:32.191)

So, yeah, so during my days at Tundra land, we were, we were a partner of the Green Bay Packers. So I had a chance to interact with a lot of professional athletes and such, and on the side and out to dinner and such. And I think, I think the one thing I would say that if you were to pull them aside, the, the, the best are actually rather humble. I think that I think there's, there's a humility to, to them and.

And I think that comes from practice and repetition. And I think early on, maybe sometimes we feel a little cocky. Sometimes it's, we think we're good at something when we're really not, and therefore we're a little cocky and we can get knocked over pretty quickly. But I think, I think over time, I think we, with practice and other people believing in us and some wins and repetition, we start to become quite confident. And I think, I think when I think about whether it's a sales rep or anything like that, practice, repetition,

and small wins creates confidence. You know, and I want confident reps. I don't necessarily want cocky reps. I want confident ones. Personally.

Chris Kiefer (42:31.882)

Hmm.

Chris Kiefer (42:37.29)

Yes. Yeah. So how do you get someone confident sooner? Because I would agree with you. You want you can't would you say you can be very, very confident and humble at the same time?

brian gottlieb (42:51.295)

You can be, of course, you can certainly be very confident, very humble at, you know, how do you get people there? Look, I think again, it's, I think it, I think it's about, it's about helping them craft a plan that's attainable, right? As the leader of the business, what, you know, helping them craft a plan that's attainable and then, and then creating small wins along the journey so they can see their progress. And, and, and also in some ways normalizing it too. I'll give you an example. Let's say that.

Let's say I'm a, let's say I'm a, I don't know, I'm dealing with a divorced couple, okay, that they're going through a divorce, right? And I'm an arbitrator for that couple. I might wanna say to them ahead of time, look, you know, we're gonna have, it's gonna take a week of sitting down and talking. There are gonna be times you're gonna be really upset with each other. You're gonna be freaking out. Don't worry, that's all very normal. Because if you don't say that, when it does start, people do start to get,

Aggravated and upset they might think oh my gosh. This is never gonna work We need to go to court you have to normalize things and part of part of developing people is normalizing Challenges that are going to happen so that when they do happen they don't think they're failures So in other words, I want to normalize the idea that you're gonna you're gonna learn a lot of scripts I'm gonna share with you in the beginning. It's it's easy to want to miss a few words. That's perfectly normal It's okay. It's easy to want to be uncomfortable role -playing. I get it. It's you know, I

Normalize the things that you know are typical areas that make people want to quit, right? If you normalize that and let them grow through it, you're actually helping them with their confidence because, oh yeah, Brian said this was gonna happen. I expected it. I'm still all in.

Chris Kiefer (44:35.37)

I love that. That, uh, I just always, there's so many things. This is why I love this podcast. It's just like the number of connections and random, like, um, what's the word connections that are my brain makes with this stuff. My daughter, uh, I think this was when she was probably four years old. She, my wife always had a hard time putting her to sleep because kids, you know, it's dark and what our kids, kids are afraid of the dark, right?

So my wife would just, she was just like, I can't put Ellie to sleep. You gotta take over whatever. And she's like out with the girls one night. And so I'm putting Ellie down and she's like, dad, I'm scared. And I was like, of what? And she was like, I'm scared of the dark. And I was like, yeah, I am too. That's normal. Everybody's afraid of the dark. It's cause it's, you can't see anything. That's scary. Good night. Close the door. And she was just like.

brian gottlieb (45:28.447)

right?

Chris Kiefer (45:32.042)

And she went to bed and I was like, how often as parents, do your kids tell you, I feel this way? And then you're like, no, you don't. It's okay. You don't need to feel that way. You don't need to be scared. It's like, but I am scared. So now what? So you're telling me I'm not supposed to, but I am. I feel like it's the exact same thing. I'm just like, when someone is, or I guess what I'm going to relate back to business is that when someone in business is a good manager,

they can preemptively know, oh, here's the six things that are gonna happen. And I'm going to tell you upfront that you should expect it about week three is when you get burned out and whatever, paint the picture. And then the person's like, oh, this is all like they called it. This is exactly what's happening. You know?

brian gottlieb (46:18.463)

Look, one of the ways, when you think about the role, going back to the manager as an example, we would share with our managers, and we would draw a four square, where on one side of the four square was performance, and the other side is culture fit, and it was high and low. So you might have a low performer, low culture fit, a high performer, high culture fit, et cetera. And we would explain to them that the role of the manager is dealing with, you're gonna have four different types of people on your team. You're gonna have a low performer, low culture fit.

You want them to be successful somewhere else as quickly as possible. You have a high performer, high culture fit. You want to promote them because they're going to do great for you. But that's not where you're going to spend all your time. As a manager, your places where you're going to be frustrated and it's perfectly normal is what do you do with the high culture fit, low performer? The person you absolutely love that isn't hitting their numbers. Or what do you do with the high performer, low culture fit? The person that's significant, they can accomplish a lot of things.

but you can't put them in your company meetings because they're highly disruptive. How you navigate those two boxes will define your journey as a leader. And while leadership isn't about you, it certainly starts with you. But ultimately, you can be measured based on how your team performs both in your presence and in your absence. And that's where, and to tolerate high performers, low culture fits or low performers, high culture fits,

your it will change your culture because your culture is defined by the lowest level of acceptable behavior. And if you if you allow for the wrong behaviors inside of your business, it's not going to be good. You have to coach up you have to coach up.

Chris Kiefer (47:57.898)

I love that. Um, the, uh, this is the last little piece I think that's tied into that topic and then we'll move to the closing questions, but you talked about FUD fear, uncertainty, and doubt. That's right in there with, uh, managing people. Correct. And tell me, tell me what the significance of those, I think when you, when I wrote this down in my notes here, it was talking about helping someone else reach their fullest potential. Is that.

brian gottlieb (48:15.359)

Sure, of course.

Chris Kiefer (48:27.914)

Like you do that by navigating or helping them navigate FUD or is that for yourself?

brian gottlieb (48:32.927)

Yeah, I mean, FUD is that thing. Yeah, I mean, look, fear, uncertainty and doubt. We all have it, right? We all have it. But how do you, how do you march forward despite it? Right. And, and look, I think anybody that starts in an organization that's never been in this industry before, there's a ton of reasons to have FUD. There are, again, there are scripts to learn. There is a process to learn. It's a new industry to learn. FUD is normal and, and A, you have to normalize that. Right. And, and, and, and B, I mean, how many

people watching this have had sales reps that they thought were going to make it and dropped out halfway through training. They just didn't make it. What was the reason why they quit? Was there their voices in their ear, their FUD voices louder than the feeling of belief they had in themselves? And it could be homeowner has FUD about doing business with you. People have FUD about whether they can accomplish something. FUD is serious. And but we can overcome it both.

with the customer and also with our teammates as well. Just know it exists and normalize it.

Chris Kiefer (49:36.778)

So let's go to the wrap -up questions I ask everybody. Three book recommendations.

brian gottlieb (49:45.023)

Yeah. The first book is somebody might have heard of Good to Great or Built to Last. Those are two books by Jim Collins. But the best book that he ever wrote was Why the Mighty Fall. I recommend every business leader reads that because it shows why do companies actually go out of business. And it's five different phases they go through. And one of them is hubris thinking you can do anything at any time. So I recommend Why the Mighty Fall.

I always recommend from a strategy book, I think the best strategy book ever written was The Art of War by Sun Tzu. And I think from a personal development, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.

Chris Kiefer (50:27.018)

Mmm.

brian gottlieb (50:28.351)

Those are my big three. And of course, Beyond the Hammer, written by Brian Gottlieb, that's coming out on September 10th.

Chris Kiefer (50:34.666)

Ooh, I like Beyond the Hammer, that's a good title.

And what is your favorite movie?

brian gottlieb (50:42.655)

Lamis Orablis. Lamis.

Chris Kiefer (50:45.802)

Have you seen the, I'm assuming you've seen the Broadway play?

brian gottlieb (50:49.023)

I have seen the Broadway play. I've seen that. Yeah, it's great. Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (50:53.066)

I just, my wife is a big Broadway fan and we were friends with another couple that the husband is a huge Broadway fan. And so we went and saw Les Mis in Spokane, they came through and I've been the soundtrack for that movie or for the play, I mean.

is incredible. It's so good. And I watched, uh, I don't know if you've seen any behind the scenes on just the art, the structure of the music and like the overlap of the, have you ever researched any of that? I'll have to, I'll send you a link to one of these background videos of like they were dissecting the musical. Um, I don't know what the right word is. I'm going to say architecture of like the certain songs that are like,

brian gottlieb (51:31.743)

I haven't but I'll have to now. Please.

Chris Kiefer (51:47.21)

early on they're like downer songs basically, but then they copy over like the core chord structure and then change a couple things for the redemption at the end. Anyways, it's super, super fascinating.

brian gottlieb (52:01.759)

Yeah, and that's kind of it, right? It's when you talk about the theme of purpose, right? And how purpose changes direction, right? And that's kind of what that movie's about.

Chris Kiefer (52:12.106)

Oh yeah, yeah, totally. Well, and what is your preferred method for people to reach out to you?

brian gottlieb (52:19.327)

Yeah, they can go to my website. Maybe they have a business where they want some early stage investing. I'm always happy to look at something. Maybe they're a larger business, they need a board seat. My website is briangotlieb .com. briangotlieb .com. B -R -I -A -N G -O -T -T L -I -E -B .com. There's a contact us page there. You're welcome to get ahold of me there and maybe we can connect.

Chris Kiefer (52:41.29)

Awesome, and what does the next five to 10 years look like for you, Brian?

brian gottlieb (52:46.015)

Well, I'm invested in many businesses as an advisor in a variety of businesses. I've got my book coming out and got a lot of speaking engagements, as you know. So I do a lot of keynotes and speaking at conferences, and I'm just going to continue to see how I can mentor others and make a positive impact in this world.

Chris Kiefer (53:02.57)

That's awesome. Well, I really appreciate your time today and we'll have to chat again as the book launch nears, but that's exciting and I'm going to send me information on how I can pre -order that. All right. Thanks, Brian.

brian gottlieb (53:05.535)

Peace my friend.

brian gottlieb (53:13.247)

You got it. Thanks everybody. Have a great day. See ya.