Chris Ruisi - How to Be Exceptional in 8 Simple Steps

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Welcome to the Exit Coach radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And don't miss our one minute exit coach tip of the day on Exit Coach Radio. Dot com and now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black. Welcome everyone. Thanks so much for listening today. I am very pleased to get to our guests in just a 2nd. 1st, I want to remind you that we've interviewed over 600 advisors, authors, and thought leaders, and we've recorded all of them so you can listen to them anytime. There are 35 different topic file folders. You'll find on our audio library at exacoachradio.com, everything from learning how to work within your small business to enhance your leadership, to prepare your family business for transition, get your business ready for sale, prepare for your life after exit, a wide variety of topics, so please join us there. My first guest today is Chris Ruizi, and he's joining us from the coaches zone. In Holmdale, New Jersey, let me tell you a little bit about Chris. He's the founder and CEO of the Coaches Zone, and he's an experienced business coaching professional with an exceptional record of leadership in both large and small businesses. He mentors and guides executives and owners to find their stretch point to learn the full measure of their capabilities, and he helps them to master being comfortable, feeling uncomfortable. And that's so important today to get outside your comfort zone. His book Step Up and Play Big How to Be Exceptional in 8 Simple Steps has received wide recognition as being a practical tool for anyone who desires to achieve more. Chris, thanks for joining us and welcome to the show. Hey Bill, thanks for having me. Chris, uh sounds very fascinating your book and and what you do. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got started as a uh uh coach for business owners. Well, um, I like to joke that I was, uh, you know, born in a personnel department back in 1970 and then I came down the Hudson River in a wicked basket and was raised by personnel people, but that's where I got my, my grounding, if you will. I only worked for two companies. One was a bank for about 4 years and then I moved on to a company called US Life Corporation and as director of personnel, but eventually wanting to get my hands dirty and get and get into the mix. Eventually became president and chief operating officer and CEO of that company. Uh, my last assignment was to sell the company which at the time was about a $2.5 billion dollar transaction. Now how I got into what I'm doing now is that as I progressed in my leadership journey, if you will, it really became important that I not do as many things as I used to do and begin to develop and teach people how to do the things that they should be doing to relieve me of duties so I could focus on more strategic issues or the things. That best capitalize on my skills. So in essence what a coach does is that he shows his players that they do have the capabilities. They may have to make a change and that's where being comfortable being uncomfortable comes in, but they may have to adapt some new habits, new behaviors, or unlearn some others, and my job at some point in my career was to build teams to be able to, uh, execute on our strategy and, um, it's that concept, if you will that I carry forward today to my, my coaching practice and I. I describe myself as a simple old country coach who carries the equipment bag and keeps score. My clients do the, do the work on the on the field of play in their businesses. Well, yeah, except with the difference that you played in the big leagues before you came back down to the little league field with your coaches back, yeah, it's just a matter of scale, same challenges. And, and it sounds like something that you you've you've always loved or you were well suited to do is to build teams and help others to build their teams so it's very fascinating that uh you, you retired as a CEO of a company or help that you helped sell and then you came back down to the level of coaching and giving was that. Uh, considered, uh, did you think about that long and hard before you started that as an encore career or did you think, you know, I know I'm not gonna do start another company and build it up, or where did you, where'd you go with that? I decided that um you know, the transaction when we sold the company was about I was about age 55 at the time. Uh, and also I was about 51, 52. I take that back and I decided it was time to do something different and as I look back at my career, I took about a year to do a mental toothbrushing and, uh, then decided to start up my own little business and, uh, work with entrepreneurs, business owners, business leaders, C-suite executives, things of that nature. Well, it's fascinating that your your encore career is to help people learn what you did to step up and play big, and again the name of the book is Step up and play Big How to be exceptional in 8 Simple Steps. Can you sum up with what those 8 steps are? Sure. The first one is you need to have a vision, or in other words, you need to have some clarity as to where you want to go and where you want to be, and I like to ask people to just plan it out for 2 years, and you can. Along that journey of 2 years you'll get smart and you can then add incremental years to that period. Um, so without that clarity you're going to spend more time than you should going down dead ends, hitting bumps in the road, and, uh, finding yourself confused and overwhelmed. You're never going to eliminate those factors, but by having a clear focus as to what you want to build, uh, it helps you get to where you want to go a lot faster and maybe with a few less black and blues along the way. Uh, one of the second steps is to be able to make, um, tough decisions, you know, if it's, uh, in any, in any career, in any business, whether you're an entrepreneur or you work in a corporate environment, you have to make tough tough decisions and the longer you wait and, uh, and agonize over them, the worse the situation gets and more opportunities are missed. So it's the ability to recognize that you have to make a a tough decision. After that it's how you communicate the decision. To get others to buy in to understand where you're coming from, they may not agree with it, but if you can get them to understand and buy in, you're light years ahead of those who are fighting with people to try to change their minds. Um, next is understanding what leadership is and what leadership isn't. And uh the simplest thing there is leadership isn't a corner office. It's not a title. Leadership is the ability to get people to embrace your vision, to see where they fit in, to teach them where they fit in, and to help them understand that what they do is important to move the organization forward. Excuse me, uh, after that it's the ability to. Uh, to develop your team, you know, teaching people not only what they do, how they do it, why they do it, but also where it fits in, who they do it for, and how what they do is important. In this way you can begin to lay the foundation for employee engagement and getting people to help move your organization forward. One of the one of the last of the 8 steps is the ability to develop your own self-improvement plan. A leader who is, who is constantly looking at ways to make themselves better is light years ahead of those who just keep going through the same motion because I've found in my experience that when you get better, everything around you follows. Mm, that's very good very good so I I got a clear vision making tough decisions and, and especially making them quickly and and implementing on them, communicating the decision, understanding leadership to work uh helping uh figure out where people fit in and then developing your teams and self improvement. Did I miss a couple along the way? Uh, I don't think so, but let me just double check. I mean, I, I do it all the time. Um, the, oh, I'm sorry, the other one of the more important ones is that I did miss is developing habits, the right habits, OK. Our habits define us and the habits that got you to one level of success, whether you be an entrepreneur or or otherwise, may not be the same habits to get you where you want to go, for example, If I want to be in a certain place in my business revenue wise, size, whatever the case may be, in 2 years, I may have to, you know, learn how to delegate better or communicate better or learn how to plan better, or learn how to not get caught up in the minutia. So you've got to pay, you know, the most important habits that any successful individual needs to master, if you will, are self-discipline and persistence and especially. Uh, for some of you members of your audience who are or maybe trying to lay the foundation for an exit from their business, those habits become critically important to for them to get to where they want to go in order to realize the benefits of what they built in their business. And great point. And one of the one of the key things that we emphasize over and over again, especially for our smaller and mid-size business owners that are that are really the chief cook and bottle washer, is, is the fact that someday they will not be at that business they need to start that delegation process now so that they can spend more time. So give us your take or your insight if you were to tell someone, OK, you do too much too many C priority uh tasks and and you don't spend enough time on the a priority tasks, so let's free up some time. What are the a priority tasks beyond what you've told us so far for a leader? It's, it's the things that they are best suited to do. I'll start at a higher at 30,000 ft and try to work my way down. It's the best use of their skills and abilities, not and not to do things that they're comfortable doing or they find easy to do. All right, and, and they, what they have to do. is to constantly ask themselves the question at various points in the day or whatever the case may be, is this the best use of my time? Am I working on the right thing? Is this the best use of my skills? If not, who else can do this? Mm, I don't have anybody who can do this. Then who can you train to do this? And that's where delegation comes into play. And I, my advice to my clients is if you can live with the worst possible outcome, you delegate it. But clearly you don't delegate something in advance of creating a problem. You work with someone and you delegate it in such a way that you start off that that person has a pretty good understanding of what they need to do. So there's got to be some good communication between the two of you and that you're able to periodically measure how well they're doing to catch surprises before they become too damaging. Excuse me, you know, you can't create any more time during the course of a day, but you can redirect the time that you currently have. And what, what, what leaders in your, your audience needs to know will learn. is that it's not time management, it's you management. It's what they do with the time that they have available to them in the course of a day. So if they don't have someone who should, who can take over their responsibilities as a controller, if you will, then you need to find somebody and they need to fit in with their skill set into the vision you're trying to create. Do you bring somebody on board who can help you get from point A to point B? Because there isn't a business owner or business leader I know who can singlehandedly pull his company over the finish line all by themselves. Very good wisdom. That's that's very important for our listeners to hear, especially from someone who's done it like yourself. Now let's talk about, let's talk about the herd mentality. Why is following a crowd a bad idea? Well, you know, Yogi Berra once said don't always follow the crowd. A lot of people go there, it gets too crowded, and, uh, you know, the point is, um, just because a lot of people go there doesn't necessarily mean it's the right path for you. Without that clarity of that vision, you don't know the path, so you're going to be, you, you're prone to follow the crowd. You're probably, you're prone to do what others do, but that may not be the right choice for you, and you've got to be able to have the courage in your own abilities to take that risk. And try and, and take that first step along the way. Now what's the worst that could happen? You'll make a mistake. OK, mistakes are great ways to learn. It's OK to make mistakes, just learn how to make glorious recoveries. But you know, not to follow the crowd requires some risk taking, and what I always tell the audiences that I speak to and clients that I work with is to be successful in business and even in life you've got to move like a turtle, and I don't mean slowly, I mean you, you've got to stick your neck out. Because without risk taking, there is no you you're not going to realize the full measure of success that you should. I like that sticking your neck out, move like a turtle. Great, great great concepts. Now let's talk about business owners that get in their own way and self sabotage. What what is self sabotage and why is it harmful? Self-sabotage when you start to finds its its birthplace in your mindset when you start to harbor more negative thoughts as opposed to positive thoughts about what about what you're capable of doing. When you start to have doubts about yourself and you accept those doubts and you begin to utter the the the very dangerous words I can't, you're all of a sudden lowering your success bar, you're setting lower expectations for yourself. And you're going to eventually live those expectations and you start a downward spiral spiral into mediocrity and maybe even worse. I've seen people complain to me about, I never got that promotion. Well, you're sending a message that you can't do something. So all the people and people are recognizing that in you, and they're just responding to the signal and actions you're sending them. So they self-sabotage themselves. They self-sabotage themselves by trying to be perfect. Perfection is, is an impossible task. It doesn't exist, I tell people. Rather than pursuing perfection, just try to do the best you can. Learn, prepare, apply that knowledge, learn from that experience, and then move on to the next challenge. And when you try to study all the sides of the circle, that's what, that's what perfectionists do. Uh, you end up limiting yourself, you end up slowing your growth in your own development, and that has uh very detrimental effects in terms of self-sabotage, not only on yourself, but possibly your business and all the people that work for you. If you don't demonstrate that you're willing to grow, you're going to hire a whole bunch of people who don't want to grow, and you're going to find yourself with a company full of only mediocre folks, and your customers will vote with their feet and go elsewhere. Well, that's, that's great knowledge to impart to our listeners. Chris, how do employers punish their best employees? I mean, everybody wants to reward their best employees, but why would somebody be punishing their best employees and how do they do it? Well, they do it by, you know, if you and I are, we're employees in the same company. And you were a great worker and I was a slacker. OK. Our boss, will use Julie will give her an important role. Julie would come to me, could come to you and say, Bill, look, Chris would normally do this, but you know how slow he is. You know how, you know, he makes a lot of mistakes. I know I can count on you, Bill, to get this done, and you say to Julie, Sure, Julie, anything for the team, I'll do it. So what happens? You work late, I go home regular time. And eventually your attitude, your good attitude about wanting to help out with the team is going to get, uh, it's gonna shrink. It's going to be invisible at some point because you're being punished because of my lack of performance and also because of Julie's lack of courage to deal with my performance issues. So not not looking for a reality in a situation and glossing over some of the realities can actually punish some of the employees. Yeah, because Julie knows to go to you to get the job done when it's actually my job. Oh, I see. OK, it's actually my role to, it's my job to do that thing with that task, but she knows that I've been, I'm sort of a slow worker, I'm a slacker, I've got some performance issues and at the end of the day she goes to you because she knows you can get it done. Eventually you're going to get tired of getting it done for me because you've got your own plate of activities that you've got to work on. And now the whole organization starts to permeate. Well, eventually you're going to go find yourself a new game to play in, and Julie's going to be left with a whole bunch of mediocre employees who aren't getting it done, you know, to make it even worse, Julie may give me a lousy raise thinking I'll get mad and quit, but I'm happy I got any raise, and maybe that money should have gone to you. So eventually, you know, your great attitude is, is going to go away. And you're going to decide, these people really don't appreciate, they just worked me to the bone because Julie won't deal with Chris because he's just not up to speed and she doesn't know how to sit down with Chris and have a candid objective performance discussion. So so these are some of the issues that leaders have to deal with. It's a tough job and it's something that they need to deal with, and I'm sure you've made some mistakes along the way, Chris. How do mistakes actually help you? Well, mistakes give you an opportunity to learn from what you did. I, I use the analogy of a championship or all championship teams, and what they do after every game, you know, they, they play football on Sunday, they take Monday off, but on Tuesday they're all watching the game films from the Sunday game. And they're looking at what worked and they're looking at what didn't work, their mistakes, and they're going to ask themselves 4 questions. As they look at those game films and specifically at the mistakes, they're going to ask themselves based upon what took place in this game, what are we going to start doing in the next game, stop doing in the next game, do more of or do less of in the next game. So mistakes while they're, you know, they're disruptive at times, they provide an excellent, uh learning uh ground to help you become better for the next time. Now to keep making the same mistakes, that's a whole other problem. But, um, mistakes, uh. At least you've tried, you had the courage to act. Uh, you maybe your execution was, uh, was, was rocky, if you will, but mistakes provide you the opportunity to learn what you did wrong and what you need to do to make it right the next time. A lot of people, when they experience mistakes, want to get as far away as possible from that experience, and my, my point is learn from what took place and leave the worst parts behind you. So I guess the point there is to to figure out a way to watch your own game films and learn from that mistake and then really take that to heart and make sure that you're cognizant of that so you never do it again. Don't just, don't just forget about it and leave it behind. Exactly right. There's an awful lot of knowledge available from your own past experiences. Well, speaking of an awful lot of knowledge in 20 minutes, Chris, we've covered a lot of ground, and again, I want to remind listeners that they can find your book. Step up and play big, How to be exceptional in 8 Simple Steps. And of course we covered some of those key points, but I, I can imagine there's just a ton of wisdom in there. How do our listeners get that book? They can go to Amazon and order it, uh, you know, there it comes both in a hard copy, soft copy of paperback, as well as, uh, you know, electronic version. They can go to my website and order, and if they order from my website, uh, I have both hard copy as well as paperback. I'll sign the book for them and send them some step up and play Big Chocolate, which is a special energy boost for them. Wonderful. OK, and then you also, and your website is what? Chris Ruisi.com. That's C H R I S R U I S dot com dot com. And if they go there, I would, I would urge them to sign up for my Monday morning wake-up call, which is a free newsletter comes out every Monday morning. At 7:30 it shows up in your inbox and it's on one particular topic. Uh, this past week, the question was, do you have a significant other? And that by that I mean do you have a good number 2 in your organization who will tell you like it is to keep you from getting into trouble? Fantastic. What a great way to start the week, and thank you so much for starting our show today with some fantastic information for our guests, Chris. I hope you'll come back and join us again. I think we can get a lot deeper into these, especially these 8 tips, these 8 steps at another interview, but it's been my pleasure to have you on the show today. Thank you so much, Bill. My pleasure as well. Thank you. We're going to take a short break. We'll be right back after this, so please stay with us. Just thinking about what will happen to your business if you're gone keep you awake at night? Will you get the price you need from your business to carry you through retirement? The BEI Network of Exit Planning Professions is the world's leading advisor network with the power to help business owners transition out of business on their own timeline and terms. Ask your most trusted advisor to create a BEI plan for you or visit us at exitlannning.com. That's exitlannning.com. You're listening to Exit Coachradio.com, the information station for age 50 plus business owners, where we're interviewing top advisors for their best tips, ideas, and precautions so you can be well planned. We upload new one minute tips every day. Exitcoachradio.com. Come listen for a minute. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio. Men, if you're ready to reclaim your edge, listen up. I used to be held back by constant bathroom trips with multiple wake-ups during my sleep and looking for restrooms whenever I was out. Then I discovered better man. After just two months, I started experiencing fewer trips to the bathroom, less urge to go, and I even slept through some nights. I feel a noticeable boost in my overall well-being. And sexual stamina, it gives me the freedom and confidence to live life on my terms. Better Man is clinically tested and trusted by thousands of men over 25 years. Ready to take back control? Go to Bebetternow.com to order your supply today. That's Bebetternow.com. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This is not intended to diagnose, treat cure or prevent any disease. Use this erected. Individual results may vary.