Dave Ramsey’s 5 Stages of Growth (And Why Most Businesses Stall) | AOAB Ep. 33 with John Felkins

20:41Chris Cruz:Yeah, even that question is so real because even for me, being a creative that can design, can do all this stuff, realizing like, hey, the way that this doesn't grow is if I am designing. That's right. Like if I'm doing the designing, no. So I'm going on the hunt to look for the talent that can actually design. And our team has been on the hunt to find so that we knew that that would unlock us. That's awesome to hear because that's kind of what we do. And that's a harder problem than actually designing a thing, right? Because I have all opinions about everything. Because I have all the opinions about how that looks.

21:12Chris Cruz:You ask the team, they'll go, hey, what is Chris's main feedback going to be? Font choice. They're going to anticipate because I'm going, oh, but I wouldn't. Okay, got to let that go in order for us to keep going. Yep. And then how do they get to the point where they don't even have to ask that question? They're looking at it through your eyes. And that's what causes consistency in the brand, right? Because it's not some new person doing some new thing that's like, this is out left field from what we've done that has caused us to be successful to begin with. So once you solve that problem, you get everybody pointed in the same direction.

21:46You get the whole

21:46Chris Cruz:thing firing on, you know, all the cylinders. Well, then, then you get to the trailblazer stage and what we talk about the trailblazer, and these are just names, right? But like the trailblazer stage is about being able to scale the business because you start to get these little glimpses, right? Once you get everybody firing on all cylinders and pointing the same direction, you start to realize, man, we're succeeding. Like we're picking up some speed, like this is working. And you start to get a glimpse of the opportunity in the marketplace. And you think if we do this right, we could 10 X this thing.

22:18We could help a lot more people, but you start looking around your leadership table and you think, I don't have the leadership team it takes to scale this thing, to meet and to capitalize on the market opportunity. Right. We, we can't get there. You know, you're the chief marketing officer. You're the CEO. You're, you know, cashing the checks, writing the checks, collecting the money, emptying the wastebasket, you know, cleaning the dishes, like the whole thing. And then maybe you got to keep one or two people that are with you, but y 'all are just running in a million different directions. You're spread too thin.

22:52You're wearing too many hats. You need a cross-functional, strong leadership team that can all think in the same, you know, I don't mean they're some kind of, you know, collective mind. I just, they get it. They get what the brand stands for.

23:07Chris Cruz:Okay, this is a great area to stop too because what I see so often with creatives who are building businesses is this process, right? They'll be a very talented designer. Then they're gridlocked with, they can't take any more work because there's only so much you can do as one person. Right. And then when they start to scale up, they can't go through that process because they don't even, they've never invested a day of their life in leadership. Right. They've only invested in their craft. Right. They've only spent, all right, I'm going to be the best at this because they were, I mean, honestly, they were told you have to be the best at your craft or you won't succeed.

23:38Chris Cruz:So they niched down skillset, not realizing it costs them later to scale because they never grew leadership. They never grew the talent to develop a team and think about a team. So when you're in this stage, when you say cross-functional team, break that down so that when somebody's at that stage, they're going cross-functional team means this. So let's just use your example. Let's say you have a phenomenal creative, right? And they build a team around them that gets it. Yeah. Well, you just use me. That's fine. You can call me a phenomenal creative. I like that for today. Okay. We'll get personal here.

24:11Right. I mean, I suspect that you're highly artistic in your own way. Yeah. Right. Well, that's fantastic. But if you need somebody to crunch a bunch of numbers as a CFO or a controller or whatever for you, maybe, I don't know for you, that might be like a, you know, kryptonite, right? Like, Oh, yes.

24:32Chris Cruz:You hate that. You tell them I can't expense report my way out of a brown paper bag is what an accounting has told me. Not in those exact words, but very, very close. Right. That drives you crazy. So you need somebody sitting at the table with you that you can trust. Not only just from an integrity perspective, which it's not assumed, but they're not even sitting at the table if you can't trust them at that level. Right, right. I mean, they get the mission. They understand what you're trying to accomplish. They're a part of a team. That's a function. What you're doing is a function. The lady that's in charge of sales, that's a function.

25:10Each one of the seats that you need, you know, CFO, CMO, sales, all of it. The very seats on the bus, the right people on those seats on the bus. That's exactly right. You need a team of leaders, not just a team that can execute on the project, a team of leaders that can help scale the whole thing. And that is tougher than finding just another designer that can design the way you do. Then once you have that team of leaders, then they have to start to, and I kind of hesitate here because we're not big fans of corporate America, like the bad part, the bureaucracy parts of corporate America. But you got to start to grow up as an organization.

25:55I'm thinking in our world. Here's just a quick example. Love it. We have a Monday morning meeting with our entire team. We have 1 ,000 people in there. Every Monday. Just for Entree Leadership? No, no. This is all of Ramsey. All of Ramsey. There's about 100 of us in Entree Leadership, but all of Ramsey, 1 ,000 people.

26:12Chris Cruz:Yeah. We have a meeting every Monday. All 1 ,000? All 1 ,000. How long is this meeting? Hour. Okay. Somewhere between around an hour. Yeah, maybe a little short. Okay. Doesn't go over an hour. Okay. Can you imagine how much payroll that is? Yes. It's a lot. My brain went to multiply each person's. That's a very expensive meeting. It's a lot. When that started, and I've been there, this is my 14th year. 14 years ago, there would be two mics at the front of the room. And people would just walk up and be like, hi, I'm John. I got an announcement about Entree Leadership. And they would just say whatever they would say.

26:49And it was like a box of chocolates. You didn't know what you were going to get, right? Today, it's produced by a whole team of event producers. there's an agenda. We all know what's going to get discussed. You're teed up if you're going on stage, like it's very programmed. It is had to grow up tremendously. And so when I say we have to grow up as an organization, maybe it's, maybe it's communication like that meeting, right? It can't just be ad hoc. Yeah.

27:19Chris Cruz:It can't be free for all. It can't be a free for all hiring. When I got hired, I sat down with one guy and Rick Perry was the first guy in HR. He was fantastic. We had conversation over coffee and, you know, I met the people that I was going to work with and it was like, Godspeed and go get them. And I did. Yeah. Today we have a two day onboarding. We have a meeting with Dave. Okay. Let me ask you a question. Do you ever find in that growth? Because I think some of the risks that I've heard and interacted with is you, you grow so much that your systems become the thing you serve, not the mission anymore.

27:54Chris Cruz:And it becomes so important. I've got to do this or this way. And you almost become gridlocked by the thing you built to try to help you scale. Have you run into that? Absolutely. And that's why our brand is what it is, Entree Leader. Of course, that's just a made up word. And we pronounce it like hillbillies, Entree Leader. It's entrepreneur and leader slammed together. And so why that brand is what it is, is because we don't just want the refined, sophisticated, scientific leader approach. Yeah. Where it's like so dialed and you've almost taken all the air out of the room. There's no risk anymore.

28:28That's right. You've scaled without soul. And that's what we don't want. So we also want the entrepreneur DNA in there too. But as you know, the problem with the entrepreneur DNA is everybody's got a new idea. This is going to be fantastic. We're going to chase that, chase that. And you're herding cats. So what we're trying to do is marry those two concepts together and get a balance between those two things. So we get the more civilized approach to doing things and we don't lose the heart that's behind it. And so that's, that's why the brand is what it is. And let me just say this, the brand just represents what the best practices are of Ramsey solutions.

29:06So it's not like we went over in a corner and said, like, let's create entree leadership. It's like, how does this company run? Hey, you Entree leadership team members, go take that to the world. And so it's not our idea. It's just our best practicing. It was an exporting of what you guys were already doing on a consistent basis. You were eating that cooking, living it.

29:23Chris Cruz:You didn't make it in an echo chamber that you thought would sound good. You reverse engineered your process. That's right. Okay. So you had Trailblazer, you said there. Is there another two stages, I guess then? Yes. And it's just - This is my first time hearing all your stages. Well, now you got a book full of them. I'll call you in six months when I'm like, Hey, I'm stuck at this stage. You need to come down to the office and hang out. So the next one is peak performer. And frankly, once you start scaling and have that cross-functional team and you have wired your culture into your process, you've grown up as an organization, all that stuff you've got to do in Trailblazer, you get to a point where it's fantastic.

30:01You start to own your part of the market. You're the go-to company in your space, in your town, in your region. you're at peak you know state and you can stay there for for as long as you want you know and like you know dave said like you're not gonna stay there forever but you can stay there for years and years and years life is good the threat though is as you get comfortable yeah and you start to get sick organizationally from the inside out you start to worship the processes you start hiring people that take it for granted they don't understand what it took to get here And so you can go backwards.

30:37But that's peak performer life.

30:39Chris Cruz:That's interesting because in the peak performer area, there's this great quote, and I think about it so often from the movie The Dark Knight Rises with Batman. There you go. And Batman has gone into quiet. I was hoping you would go into Bane's voice. Oh, yeah, please. You think darkness is your R.I. No. But anyway. Please don't cut that out. Don't cut that out. You got to keep it. But the scene where he says victory has defeated you, yeah he tells batman you fight like this younger man but you really the reality is victory has defeated you yes the thing you were hungry for the thing you fought for you got yes and that has caused you to kind of decay in that process so that's the the threat of the peak performer is that that's right now they're they're sitting a little bit like we don't have to chair blaze anymore we don't have to push the envelope anymore we don't have to do these things that's right what do you do to get out of that like how did like if that happens like what do you do to get out of that mindset?

31:31Well, out of the mindset, you have to live a little bit scared. I don't mean, that's probably overstating it, but you got to be on guard. You have to be a defender of the culture. The right way to say it is you have to be vigilant. You don't have to be fearful. You have to be vigilant because you know what it took to get there. And when you see something that doesn't add up, you have to take action against it and say, Hey, we can't do that. Or, Or we can't let that in here because you can slip backwards. So what's after Peak Performer? Peak Performer.

32:04Chris Cruz:Because I mean, most people would go like, I'm stoked with Peak Performer. That's right. And they should be. And they should be. They're good with it. They're like, industry best. Thank you. We got the plaque. Right. In 500. We're good. That's exactly right. But then you got to ask the question, like, what is next? Not for me. What is next for the business? Because like I said earlier, the survival rate on the planet is 0%. So that's such a delicate way to refer to that, isn't it? Yeah, perfect. We're all terminal. Right. You got to ask yourself, do I want this thing to live on beside me, beyond me?

32:37Do I want this thing to live beyond me? And this isn't a moral issue. It's okay if you're like, hey, I'm a craftsman. I do this. I've built this. And when I'm done, it's okay. It's over. we're we're of the mind like we feel like we're we're trying to do something out here that is good for the world and we're not willing to give it up Dave's not willing to see it just go away when he's done so legacy builder is about setting the business up to thrive after your involvement so it's not like peak performer and life is good and then it's like something even better it's like no it's it's something that will last beyond you which is better but I don't mean it's

33:19Chris Cruz:just like more performance right you said something there that there's you the way that the the purpose doing something good in the world like the how are you guys like wrestling with the conversation of because here i'll say it like this because i have this i wake up with a deep sense of purpose like i'm driven by that what a gift yeah then this other part of me that over the last four or five years three years specifically learning this new part of me that I kind of I would say I I the right word would be undervalued it and discredited my understanding of hey what could be profitable what could you do like and I've wrestled with the all right people before profit or the like but you oh it's yeah it's great to have a purpose but at the end of the day if we don't have any money we're and I've had to wrestle with getting acquainted with driving a business that makes money and being happy about it and not feeling like I'm villainized because of that.

34:17Chris Cruz:Right. And, but then on the other side, not getting lost in that, that I don't have a purpose. And then also not being lost in such an idealistic place that I think about purpose and I'm like, well, we didn't make any money, but we sure are doing good in the world. Yeah. And you sound more like a nonprofit. Like, how do you guys think about that? When you said that statement, we do this good in the world, it made that part of me stand to attention. You know, it's really what you do with those profits. The way that we look at it is, is that's an opportunity to reinvest back in the mission and advance the mission even farther than it is today.

34:52If it's about me just extracting money out of the out of the business to improve my lifestyle. And I don't you know, I don't care so much about the business or I I value this way over the mission of the business, then it's about me. but the way that Dave has always looked at it and the way that we all look at it because we're a part of a team is, Hey, we do pay attention to the dollars. Yeah. For one thing, it's a conversation with the marketplace. Like when we, when money is coming in, it's like, we're doing something right. Money not coming in, we're doing something wrong. So we have to pay attention to it.

35:26But as money is made, as revenue is generated, that's an opportunity to say, okay, we believe in what we're doing. Let's reinvest this money into the mission and continue to drive it even further. Don't, don't, uh, I don't want people to turn that into, you can't take some of it home yourself. We're not, we don't apologize for money. We want people to live a good life and enjoy the fruit of their labors. That's, that's fantastic.

35:55Chris Cruz:If you kill, you hunt, you eat, like go for it. Drag it back to the cave and eat us. That's what they would say, right? That's perfectly fine. And we want you to do that. but we got to ask ourselves like what are we doing it for and i might ask you a little bit like when you see these other ideas are they like other directions or they're just like man i could do this and we could make even more money like in the same direction is it most of the time it's in the same direction it's in the it's it's my wrestle is more so around um when you when you when you talk to the bottom line only when you only talk about that yeah that's been villainized in a way that you're like they're just money hungry right and that's all they care about is making money and they'll they'll do whatever they need to do to make money and they have no soul and the other part is like they've got so much purpose then you you hear them you talk to them they they're they present so well and you go hey all right let's talk about what you guys are doing in revenue like um well not so good not so good because i haven't seen a world that balances all of them and understands that they're not, um, which I'm hearing your world as a great example of that, because there's a, a world that's doing it well, because I think I've looked at it as a Venn diagram where the circles are not always equal.

37:05Chris Cruz:Like the idea that purpose, sometimes it's like salt. It's not the largest part of the meal, but without it, you really lose the flavor of this thing too much of it. And you overpower everything else. But I, I think I've been trying to find that dance of all that stuff. So when I heard you say it, it intrigued this inner part of me that is wrestling with all this on a day to day basis. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think sometimes balance is an illusion. Yes. Right. When you're, when you're starting a business, you know, the mission might be make payroll by Friday, you know, because you're just trying to pay the bills and keep the thing alive and that's okay.

37:42Yeah. There's nothing wrong. There's nothing to be ashamed about that. We don't belittle small beginnings if that's where you are. Yeah. but at some point you got to ask yourself like what's the higher purpose of this thing and just not lose that north star yeah because if it's just about me yeah it's going to run out of gas yep and you don't want that to happen and so there's going to be seasons where it's like man we gotta we gotta make payroll we this thing has got to work or it just might be conversation by conversation like hey we're spending way too much on this stuff we got to dial this back you know and then sometimes you're going to do something that's going to cost you money because it's the right thing to do.

38:19And at any given moment, it might not feel like you're a hundred percent balanced, but you need to come back to the center of the road and say like, why are we here? What are our values? What's the purpose? Who do we exist for, for us or for the people outside this wall, the walls? So we say all the time, like we exist when we talk to our team, we exist for the people outside these walls.

38:40Chris Cruz:We don't exist for ourselves. What do you guys do on a regular basis on a rhythm or a cadence? I know you mentioned the Monday staff meeting. I don't know if that's the only place or the main place. How do you keep that North Star in an organization as you've seen over 14 years? How have they done that? And has it changed? It's never changed. Our whole business in one shape or another is to bring hope to people, you know, bring hope to people. And of course, that's a lot about finance, personal finances, because of what debt does, because how debt enslaves people. But I got to be honest with you, on trade leadership, it's the same thing.

39:17We bring hope to people. That person that's stuck on a treadmill, you can see it in their eyes. Just what you do is different. It's just why you do it. That's right. Yeah, that's right. Why we do it is the same reason. And we hammer it. Really? What I mean by that, yes, that Monday morning meeting, it's on the walls. We have T-shirts. I told you I interviewed a guy this morning. Yeah. We had a list of the core values in our mission. I slid it across the table, and I said, what do you think? So from the get go, like I'm watching his eyes, right? Yeah. You're like, is this going to, are you going to self-select out?

39:50That's right. And it happens. I've had people look at that list and be like, oh yeah. I've had people look at that list and then be like, yeah, it seems good.

39:58Chris Cruz:Wait, wait. Okay. Back out here. Cause I think that's really interesting. You have people in interviews with you or in the go like, yeah. And it doesn't, it's, they're good, but they're, and you recognize you're, you're, what are you doing in that interview that, what are you looking for that you're, that, that the responses. Like how, how can a, an executive in the amount of interviews you're doing, how can an executive learn what you're looking for when you show that? Well, let, let me, let me say our hiring is a team effort. Yeah. So we have a team of recruiters, you know, and they're screening people out.

40:32So by the time they get to me, it's gotta be a good, it's pretty, it's a pretty good fit. Right. Um, and they've gone through a half a dozen interviews before they ever get to me. And we're looking for that values fit.

40:44Chris Cruz:I think, okay, actually that you say that because why that's funny is because when I was considering moving to Tennessee, I didn't have a job yet. And I was, before we did anything that we're doing here, I looked at Ramsey's website and I remember looking at the job process and seeing a thing that said this process can take, I think it's like four months. And I was like, I'm moving in two. like this ain't no way i can do this process it's insane yeah it's an insane process i'm good good friends with a guy that runs hr for us armando lopez and i think he told me last time we talked we get about 30 000 applications a year so the recruiting team wades through a whole bunch of stuff you know and and then the the leaders that are going to be working directly with folks they're looking for team fit and chemistry and all that but to answer your question you're asking when they get to me, what am I watching for?

41:31Chris Cruz:Yeah. I look at, at a resume and I think, okay, that's, that's well and good. You know, I appreciate that you've got some experience, but then I set it aside and I just try and get to know the person. Okay. And if there, if there was a trick, which there's not is I try and make the person comfortable and get them talking. Because if you listen long enough, people will tell you who they are. And you know, sometimes I'll ask somebody, why didn't you go into business for yourself? Or might, I might ask a guy, ask the guy today, Like, what's the difference between a good and a great coach? And just listen for the answer and just get them talking.

42:04And, you know, if they say, oh, I got this certification and I went to this class and I'm like, that makes me nervous. But when they look at me and they say, you know, I think that what makes a good coach is somebody that's just got a, you know, can be present with a client and listen really deeply and mirror back, you know, what they're hearing. I'm like, okay, I've got somebody. Yeah, I've got somebody. They're not throwing a credential on the table. They're throwing an experience. That's exactly right.

42:27Chris Cruz:Okay. So let me go a layer deeper here and ask you, what has been one of the challenges that you've faced in the last year with growing Entree Leadership as the world is starting to change so many different directions? What are some of the challenges in growing this brand that you guys are facing and what are you doing about it? Wow.

42:50So this might sound like a little inside baseball, but I'm just thinking through it. I don't think there's anything wrong with sharing all this. We'll cut it if you need to. So the biggest challenge that we really are wrestling with over the last year-ish is we recognize how many people need the kind of help that we offer.

43:13Chris Cruz:Okay. And we've had two big events that we do every year. One of them is more motivation, inspiration, get-to-know-us kind of event. And ticket sales are good on those events? Oh, yeah. Yeah, we sell them out every time. I mean, we have a phenomenal sales team. Which is rare. Well, we have a phenomenal sales team. Those tickets don't sell themselves. No, they don't. Those folks work their tail off all year long. I've been on the side of events before, and I know how grueling it is to get to the sales. It's a grind. There's almost 3 ,000 people at that event, and then there's about 800 people at the other event.

43:45So one's inspiration, and another one is application. It's like the nuts and bolts of how we run our business. Got it. Well, the opportunity in the market is bigger than what we can get through those events. So what I mean by that is, is if we converted every client that comes to that event into coaching and we help those people grow their business, we won't get to the kind of impact that we believe is possible in the world. So it's like, how do we grow beyond these events? Yeah, factors of scale here are small when you're doing it on personal events. That's right. And so particularly the 800-person event called Master Series, which is phenomenal, which is where you go to learn this for a week from Dave and his leadership team.

44:29How do you take that that's in this week-long experience and package it up in a way that you can put it out in the world and people that haven't even been to that event say, I want that. I buy into the way that y 'all run your business and I want your help walking that out. that's a that's been a challenge to have the kind of scale that we want to have because what's the challenge there for y 'all like what what are you facing in that well we have had a ticketed a gated event where we say you you buy a ticket to this event you come and we'll explain all this to you now we got to go to somebody that hasn't had that experience and say hey we'd like to help you grow their business and they what do you what would you say he's a how what do you mean how and they're Well, our first question is, well, like Dave Ramsey did.

45:19And they're like, Dave who? Right? Because if they're truly, you know this, if they're truly white space, they don't know any of that. They're not informed. We got Dave on the radio for three decades with the radio show, 20 million people a week listening to that thing. For those people, if you say, hey, I can help you run your business like Dave runs his business. They're like, okay, sign me up. I'm interested.

45:41Chris Cruz:It's centric around Dave and the knowledge of Dave. It's centric around Dave. but we're back to the very first conversation that you know part of the conversation that we have we have to go beyond that and not just when we bring them up to our house and explain it to them yes out in the marketplace we say you're having trouble hiring you're having trouble with compensation communication motivation whatever it is we can help you with that and then we have to do the work of getting you know getting them to know us and then that process you guys are you guys are taking people from going all right like you said you're having trouble hiring and they're going through this and the end result there is that they would get coached by the team at Entree Leadership.

46:16Chris Cruz:That's the goal. They can walk with someone. That's right. And that person, is it a, like, is that, is the offer that you guys offer been the same since you've started or has it, that changed to the way coaching works? That's changed too over the years. It's, it's adapted. But it has always been somebody on our team from our office. We don't, we don't do third party coaches. I thought maybe that we're not a certification business. A lot. Okay. A lot of, maybe some folks won't like saying this, I won't name names, but I will tell you, most of the coaching businesses that you're seeing ads for on the internet are certification businesses.

46:54What they want to do is they want to teach you how to be a coach and sell you a certification, and then they're done. The thing that's tough, coaching is not a super complicated business, but that's not to be mistaken as something that's easy. It is a hard business because, metaphorically speaking, you go home with this client. This client follows you back to the office. You have to walk with them day in, day out, week in, week out, month in, and month out. You're not just selling them a ticket or selling them a certification and saying, Godspeed, and go get them. You have to actually help them in the muck and in the mire and in the trenches as they walk through whatever they're doing over the months and years.

47:33It's like in-game decisions. That's right. We're coaching you in the game.

47:35Chris Cruz:We're not just in the batting cage going, heck, I teach you how to swing a bat. That's right. But in the game, you have no context for how to do this. You've got to show up to the game. You've got to be there when they're playing, all of that stuff. And so it is a different sale. And we are a coaching business. We're not a coaching certification business. So in that, if you were talking to other coaches in the world who are running their own business as a coach, why are they not succeeding? because I can point to a handful of coaches and consultants, and I go, and they're going, it's not working right now for me.

48:13Chris Cruz:Is that just a, hey, we're in a lull right now, and coaching is changing and adapting? Or you're like, no, this is what I'm seeing most commonly when coaches are struggling. Well, there's two things there. One is one that we've already talked about, and I'm going to add on a third, which is AI. Okay. Love it. You remind me to come back to AI. Easy. Thing one, the hardest sell is to make to yourself. And so if a coach doesn't believe, they don't have a deep conviction of the value that they can provide somebody, they don't make that sell to themselves, they're not going to make the sell to who they're trying to help.

48:49That's the number one reason that coaches and other similar professions folks struggle. Yeah, I would say that translates even over into the creative brand space and marketing space. Exactly. If they don't believe that. They're going to undercharge. They're going to have no margin. They're going to have negative margin. They're going to be out of business. That's just the way that it works. The second thing is, now, that's a form of success. I want to be careful because, like I said, we don't despise small beginnings. If that's what you want to do, you want to be a craftsman. And you want to work in your shop and spend your life doing that.

49:21And when you're done, you're done. There is nothing wrong with that. If, on the other hand, you want to go beyond that, you want to do something else. Well, we're back to the decision that I talked about earlier. Do you want to be a craftsman that's in business, that owns their job, or do you want to be a leader, a businessman, an entrepreneur, an entree leader that happens to be in whatever craft you're doing? That's the other reason that they're not succeeding because they're not treating it like it's a business. They're just treating it like it's a job. So those are the two main reasons. Now, what has happened in the last 36 months, 20?

49:57AI is moving so fast. Like what happened in the last week is affecting, right? Yeah. If what you do in this space in coaching is information, if it's just information, if it's just giving people answers and you try and wrap it up in a question, but really what you're doing is you're just trying to tell people things, that game is over, right? If it's just that transaction, it's over because you can get all of that information. Now, I know we said earlier that the internet solved a lot of that. But what AI has done is it has accessed all of the information on the internet in plain language. I can ask it, you know, you can misspell everything.

50:38You can say it wrong and it gets it. Yeah.

50:41Chris Cruz:And even your ability to give it context of you. That's right. And going so like there's an ability for you to go, why would I need a coach when I can plug in? Like it's so funny. we're telling people what we're seeing and we're other businesses that we're talking to talk about AI is the, the customer is coming in so much more informed than they've ever been. Of course. Cause they're doing research on AI about everything that they're about to purchase. So they're no longer going into the doctor blind and they're not even going with Google Mayo Clinic saying I got, I'm going to die. They're actually going in with like, whoa, I have some insight on me that I had never had before.

51:16Chris Cruz:And I'm, I'm using it for when, a moment where my one of my appliances was out and I'm able to take a picture, throw it in and I'm talking to the plumbers and I'm talking to them way more informed than I've ever been because of that. So if you're in that game, you said it's over. That's right. If the value in what you're trying to deliver is in the information, you're in trouble. So if a coach wants to exceed, it's really two things. Besides the fundamental decisions we talked about, looking more forward, more in how they can win going forward, They need to acquire the tools of emotional intelligence.

51:51They've got to be self-aware and really understand that. They've got to be able to show up to a call with a lot of presence, which is being able to manage your emotions, right? Then they've got to have social perception, right? Like, am I ticking this person off if I'm not? You know how that is, right? You come home at night, like you can feel it in the house.

52:08Chris Cruz:Something ain't right, right? That is social awareness, right? And then you have to be able to manage those relationships. Those four things, that's what makes up emotional intelligence. You have to have that. But those are just the tools. Those are just the tools you need. When you're coaching somebody, I would say what mastery looks like in the use of those tools is emotional acuity. Emotional acuity is you just think about visual acuity. You're creative, right? You see something. If the screen isn't dialed in, if it's fuzzy, you get a general picture of what it is. But when it's crystal, you can see exactly what this thing is and exactly what's going on.

52:46It's the same with emotions. If a coach can master emotional intelligence and those tools, they can achieve emotional acuity and they can understand what's going on. It's not like you're a Jedi. You just understand. And it's tough to do through a Zoom call, right? You're looking through a screen like we're here together. We can experience each other in a completely different way. The energy is different. It's totally different. And that's something that AI can't do. Wow. So if you're counting on information, you're in trouble. But if you know how to be a presence on a call and put somebody created, the best way to say it is if you know how to create a safe environment for your client to let their guard down and be honest about what's going on, and you can be somebody that holds up the mirror and helps them overcome their limiting beliefs and their blind spots, you don't need to worry about AI.

53:39Man, that is great. That's great. I love that. That's what we do.

53:43Chris Cruz:Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing all this. This is so insightful and so helpful. I know a lot of people are going to be looking back and reflecting on how they're building their own business and thinking, am I that craftsperson? I love it. Thanks for having me. Yeah.