Rich Allen - Radically-Engaged Teams

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 to my overall well-being, even sexual stamina. It gives me the Freedom and confidence to live life on my terms. Betterman 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 product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Use as directed. Individual results may vary. Hi everyone, it's Bill Black, the exit coach from the Exit Coach Radio show. You know, one of the biggest questions I Get on the show is what exactly goes into a business exit plan and when should I start creating mine? Well, I always tell people that the best time to start was 5 years ago, but the next best time is now because you never know when you might need it. So we put together a free report that describes what an exit plan is and what you should know. You can get it free by texting exit plan with no spaces to 44222. That's exit plan to 44222. Again, text exit plan to 44222. 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 now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black. Well, hello there. Thanks so much for joining me today. Always a pleasure to have you with me and you know, as usual we have interesting guests lined up for you today. We hope you'll be able to stay with us throughout. Today's first guest is Rich Allen, a nationally renowned speaker whose primary mission and purpose are focused on one single objective to help business owners engage and activate the power of their team. During the last 30 years in the industry, he's gathered knowledge and expertise that allows him to inform business leaders on how to energize their team and transform their business into one that is profitable, sustainable, and driven by radically engaged team members in a way that's as easy as riding a bike. Welcome to the show, Rich. Thanks so much for joining me today. Thanks, thanks for having me on, Bill. Glad to be here. My pleasure, my pleasure. You have a very interesting background and some great analogies we're going to talk about today, so I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking at your website. It's very interesting. So tell us about you and tour to profit business advisors and how you, how you started in this line of work. Sure, um, you know, I, I, my background Bill is that I come from a very large family. I've got 11 brothers and sisters. And I grew up working with my dad who had this dream that he wanted to start and own his own business. So he had, he had the intention of doing exactly what you were, what you teach people is how to build a business and then transition and exit the business successfully. But my dad was not a business owner. He had no clue how to do it and, and as a result, we struggled mightily. So as each one of us left and went off on our own, I went off to try to figure out how a business really works, what really makes it tick after having an opportunity to do that with a fairly large business, manufacturing business. I've spent the last 15 years now helping small business owners structure their business in a way that works without them so that they can truly have a business that they can transition from, that they can exit from successfully and, and achieve the dream that they've always had. Just a point of curiosity, where were you in the pack of 11? I was, uh, I was actually the 2nd of 12, so I have one older brother and I have 10, um, younger, uh, you know, I've got the, I've got 7 brothers and 4 sisters. So the clothes weren't very threadbare by the time you got them. You got them early on. That's good. OK, that's right. I was one. That's a large, a large group, a large team. You really had to, you really learned a lot about operating as a team in that type of environment, I would imagine. My team experience started very young, right? That was it. The first one, you know, being, you know, being the babysitter and, and all the, the, the. Aaron runner for the family, exactly. Yeah, you were, you were a true, a true leader. I'm sure the firstborn delegated a lot of stuff to you, so you really did all the work. It sounds like probably bringing up the group. There was a lot. There was a lot of work to be done, that's for sure, right? Yeah, so that's an interesting background, Rich, and it, you know, we always are products of our environment. I always say so. It's interesting how that would teach you how to one of the things you had in your intro is to energize your team. So when you had to rally the troops, you really probably had to use some psychology on people, on your your siblings to get them motivated to do things. What are some of the areas that you think are lacking when you talk to business owners today? What are some of the things you go into a lot of businesses and say, Well, something's missing here and it's, it's, it's commonly seen. Yeah, one of the things I think, Bill, that I see a lot is that as business owners, Um, most business owners know a lot about their industry, so they know a lot about how work should be done. And as a result, what we do is we tell people what to do, rather than allowing people to engage their minds and, and their own creative thinking to bring new ideas into our business. And that's just what it does is it limits the business growth to the knowledge of the business owner rather than taking the opportunity to engage people who are right at the, at, you know, right at the heart of where work's getting done and having them think about better ways to deliver to their customer or improve the product or service. That's huge. What you just said is is a huge. an idea for business owners that, you know, you, yes, you know how probably mechanically to do things and and what makes sense and efficiency and all that, but are you open to new ideas and are, and I guess another big point is. How are you capturing those ideas? We talk about standard operating procedures all the time, and a lot of times you walk into a business and say, Well, where are your you have standard operating procedures, and it's a dusty old notebook that's been put away and not brought back out. So these days people are learning new ways all the time. How do you, how do you keep those new ideas coming these days? You know, I think business owners have to have a method, a process to be able to engage their team in the business and the, and the idea of constantly improving their business. See, I think Bill, one of the, one of the hidden secrets of business success. Is for businesses to improve what they're doing 1% on a regular basis all the time, be looking at different ways of doing what you're doing, and the only way you can do that is to have a system, a method to engage everybody in the team, have a process to be able to do that so that the, so that the knowledge of the business doesn't live with the business owner because you know this, right? If the knowledge if everything that goes on in the business lives with the business owner. Someone wants to come by that business or take over that business, they, they, they lose all that. Unless it's embedded in the team, so you've got to do that if you want your business to be more valuable. That's exactly true, and we talk about that all the time that if your business is all in your head and it's not a series of systems that you've that you've empowered other people to do, you don't have a very good salable business and that's also true of your key people that that really, like you said, are learning newer and better ways to do things all the time. Um, how, how well are you capturing that knowledge? It's, it's very important because if they leave, it could be even worse than if you leave in some cases uh for, for business owners. Yeah absolutely so you know. So one of the things I, I like to do is, is uh check in with, with what's on your mind and one of the things that you said is that uh a business is like a bike. So how is a bike, why is a bike a perfect metaphor for a business, and why does it matter to your team? Right, so here's what I, here's what I found, right? In, in running a business, I had an opportunity to take over a business that had 220 people in a manufacturing business. And my, my thought was, Bill, to, to get everybody on the team to understand how the business works. But, you know, most people don't know how a business really works and it all seems a little academic to them. So I came up with this idea that every component of a bike. equator or can be used as a metaphor for a piece of a, uh, an element of a business. And, and by doing that, talking about the business as a bicycle, everybody knows how a bike works. Everybody knows the components of a bike. And if we can use that, we can, we can get our team to understand how a business truly does work and it's amazing how well they line up. But I used it so that I could say, look guys, this isn't all that complicated. It's like a bicycle. Let's talk about every component. Let's relate that to a business our business. And as a result, everybody said, Wow, I know what's wrong. I know what we need to fix up. Makes sense. Makes sense. So let's, let's break it down. The components of a bike I can think of are, you know, wheels, gears, a chain, pedals, steering, and a rider. Yeah, so let me, so I'll give you a quick lap on the bike, OK? Um, OK. We steer a bike using our handlebars. Well, we steer a business using a vision, having a purpose. And, and having the standards set for our business, what standards of excellence are we going to demand? That's how we steer a business. Our business, the frame of the bike is what holds all the components together, so we have to have a frame for our business. Well, the frame for our business is our organization structure, our job responsibilities, and our accountability system. Two places where the rubber truly meets the road, the front wheel and the back wheel. In business there are also two places where the rubber truly meets the road. The front wheel represents our ability to win new customers. The back wheel represents our ability to serve those customers, to deliver on the promise we made on the front wheel. And Bill, here's an interesting thing, just like on a bike, the front wheel and back wheel have to go at the same speed, otherwise we're gonna crash. We're either gonna go have the front wheel going too fast and we're gonna disappoint people or the back wheels going too fast and we're gonna run out of cash because we're not bringing enough new customers. And then there's a seat that's where our team sits, and you know, if you've been on a bike where the seat isn't positioned right, it's a really, it's, it's a painful ride. So we have to position our seats so that it's comfortable and people can put mac and to do that we have to have a good hiring process, a good onboarding system, a good compensation program, a good communication plan, a good reward system. Those are the ways we, we adjust our seat. And oh by the way, we, we need brakes on our bike so that we can control our speed while our brakes in our business are our financial controls and our key performance indicators, those things that can tell us whether we ought to put a, put a brake on the front or back wheel of our bike. Does that make sense? Yeah, and if you apply the front brakes on sales you're gonna get flip end over end and crash, right? So you gotta be careful, yeah, you gotta be that's a really good metaphors. That's a really good metaphor. You cover a lot of, you cover a lot of ground, no pun intended with that metaphor because it's easy for people to envision how a bicycle works. Everybody knows that. And then, and then what they can do to fix it in their business. That's really great, really great idea. Uh, so one, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, one of the hard things about counseling or coaching business owners is, is having them, you know, understand and metaphors really, really bring the message home. So on your website you have really cool looking website, by the way. It's at tour deprofit.com, by the way, listeners, and One of the things that you say is what does a radically engaged team look like? Freedom, confidence, and success. Can you expand on that a little bit? Yeah, I can, um, because the one part of the bike that I didn't mention was the front sprocket, which is where the pedals are on the bike. And the question that we have to be asking as business owners all the time is, where are, as our team is riding on our bike, are they on the, on the, are they on the small ring of the, of the front sprocket, the middle ring or the big ring? And what we want is everybody to be pushing forward on the big ring, which will help our business go faster. And move forward. And if we are, then that's what provides us with the things that are, that I mentioned on the website. It gives us freedom as a business owner. If our team is pushing on the big ring. Then we have freedom. We have confidence they're going to treat our customers well, and it gives us the security to know that we can invest and do other things in the business. It gives us a ton of opportunity in the business to grow and expand. Totally makes sense. If you have, if you have enough business coming in, then you can solve a lot of problems, right, if you have the cash flow and the business coming in. Um, for some people it's, uh, you know, it's a matter of then motivating that team to care about whether you're on the small, middle, or big sprocket. And so, uh, that's, that's part of engaging this team, right? Do you do that with, obviously you can motivate them with, with cheerleading and good paying compensation and benefits, um. What are some of the ways on a day to day basis you can get people to really care about whether you're on the small, middle, or big ring of the of the sprockets? You know, I've done a lot of work, Bill, over the past couple of years. I've interviewed a lot of clients and a lot of their team members and a lot of supervisors. To ask the question, what is it that what what would be the characteristics, what would be the behaviors of team members who are radically engaged in our business, and that is, you know, I think of radical engagement being like Maslow's hierarchy and needs. I don't want to get too complicated, but the idea is You know, if you think of Maslows, we all, we all apply this. We have to first be comfortable ourselves. We have to be safe and secure ourselves. That's the small ring of the bike. Then once we're good, then we move up and we worry about our team members, those people close to us, our supervisor, our team, and whether I can have a future in the business, and the big ring at the top of the Maslow's pyramid. is to do good in the world. Well, for us in business, that's to care about our customer and worry about whether our customer is successful. So I've basically identified. All statements that that employees would say, team members would say. If they were feeling good about themselves personally, their team and their supervisors and their customers, and, and knowing where people are in their head, because we all talk to ourselves in our head all day long. Our team members are doing it too. The question is whether they're saying positive things or not so positive things. We just have to know. So you know that by communicating that communicating with them and looking for those certain statements or behaviors that you've identified, right, to know, or is that something that you do with a business owner to go in and say, hey, let's figure out together what this looks like? I would imagine you go in knowing some of these things, but you're probably looking for the business owner to say, you tell me what it looks like, and I'll tell you if I'm hearing that from from your people. Right, there's a little bit of that, right? I mean, but there are some standard things that we know are true. Every business owner probably has a feeling, but then we go in, just like we survey our customers to ask how well they like our service. I think it's important to survey our, our team. To ask them how well are we satisfying their need for security, their need for upward mobility, their need to make a difference in the world. And if we can get our team actively engaged and radically engaged in our, in our business, they're going to work harder for us. But Bill, here's the reality. We know that the statistics show that 50% Of current employees who work for any business are currently looking for a new job. That's scary for any business owner. Right to know that your people are actively looking for a new opportunity. Well, if they're doing that, they're not really. Working on making your business better. They're thinking about themselves. OK, so why are they doing it? We need to understand that so we can do those things in the business to find their needs there. Right, right, right, right, right. So, so it's a lot of communication and understanding and on your website you offer people that visit a uh a 5 minute team engagement assessment, answer 12 questions and um you'll get uh what what do they get when they answer the 12 questions, um, an overview or do they, does it start communication with you or what happens? It what I do is I provide them with an overview, the graph that basically shows them where their where their weak spots are, and I invite them to jump into a conversation if we want one, but if not, it's just a good way for you to visualize and be able to say, wow, I ought to put some effort into this, into these areas to help make sure that my team is truly engaged in the business so that I don't have to. Step in, right? It's a, you know, most people do it after the fact. People leave and then they have to hire replacements and then train them and they're always working kind of in a reactionary mode. I want business owners to work proactively to engage with their team members to get them to make sure that they're satisfied and, and fully engaged in helping them. It is truly remarkable how much ground we can cover in 20 minutes, Rich, and you really, I've got a full page of notes here from your comments. I've loved looking at your website again, which is tour deprofit.com. It's something everybody should look at. R D E P R O F I T dot com. It's pretty simple. Take the assessment. Why wouldn't you? It's 12, it's 12 questions, five minutes to figure out some of these issues. What does a what are the behaviors of a radically engaged team and how can you get your team to to look like that? Rich, truly fantastic talking with you. I really appreciate your time today and I know that you. I have a special webpage with some free materials at touroprofit.com/exitcoach. So for our listeners again, Touropprofit.com/exitcoach, go there, check it out, and thank you so much for bringing this information to our listeners, and I hope we get to have another interview in the near future because this has been truly fascinating. Thank you, Bill. It's been a pleasure being on the show. 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 to my overall well-being, even. Sexual stamina. It gives me the freedom and confidence to live life on my terms. Betterman 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 product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Use as directed. Individual results may vary.