Way back?
Yeah, way back.
Way back.
All four years ago, Mr. 28-year-old.
Yeah, yeah.
I was going to be an architect.
And then I found out those guys, they really
go through some turmoil with the economy
and it was like, okay, I'll be an engineer.
And so then when I was an
engineer, it just seemed logical to
go to manufacturing. There was a number
of lanes to go to. That one
looked, and I'm just so damn happy I've been
there. I mean, it's
manufacturing is where
it's at. It's where the action is.
I mean, people are doing stuff
that people are doing. Did you ever worry you'd have to move to China?
Huh? Did you ever worry you'd have
to move yourself to China? No.
No. Never worry about
that. I went through the spell where
people said, man,
good luck finding something. All the manufacturing
has left this country. And I'm like, no,
no, it didn't. No, it didn't.
You're listening to the news.
And then, of course, a
lot did leave, but then,
as we all know over the last, whatever,
eight or ten years or something like
that, it's really been coming back.
That's awesome. Yeah.
See, I've also been
hearing that from some of the
leaders in the world lately, that there's
a big flux of
manufacturing that's coming back. So
what
was so stable in the manufacturing
industry that
made you so certain, like, man, this is
huge here. What were we doing?
What were we manufacturing here in the US
that you know is never
leaving? There wasn't
that kind of an attraction.
I mean, first
off, when I declared I was going to be an engineer, my dad
said, what do you want to do that for? All they do is
get laid off. And
I mean, and they do. It happens.
It's happened more than once. And I
know people that it's happened to more than once.
But it's, I would tell you
now, looking in retrospect, what's so damn
cool about manufacturing? People go to
work every day, and at the end of the day, they can look over there and say, I made all that stuff.
And you go to
a lot of other types of businesses, and they go,
well, I moved a lot of paper,
or I did a lot of stuff
on my computer, or I talked to a lot
of people. They can't see it, but the people
that work in manufacturing,
they're creating.
It's happening right in front of them.
And at the end of the day, it's on a truck, and
it's leaving, kind of thing.
So it's really awesome.
I gotta clarify my question, too.
What areas of manufacturing
have been super stable in the United
States?
From an industry perspective?
Yeah, from an industry perspective. I'm pretty layman's
when it comes to manufacturing.
Yeah, there's
just a lot.
I don't even know where
to start to answer that question yet, because
I've been somebody who has
not been somebody who went to a company and stayed there forever
in that industry.
I've worked in a variety of industries,
a couple of times
at the huge corporate conglomerates,
but many times at the medium
or certainly the small
family-owned, P.E. owned
manufacturing companies in arguably
niche industries.
What are some of these products, if you could
rattle some off? What are some of the ones that you went through?
So, I've done Med
Device, done some of that.
I call it Bombs and Bullets.
That's like millions of products
by itself. Sorry, go ahead.
It is, really. And that stuff was arguably
with catheters and stents
in your heart and things like that.
I call it Bombs and Bullets.
When I worked with a defense contractor, we
got to build that stuff right so we can protect this country.
That was very early on.
I've been in one that made window and door components.
You know, the window jams
and the casings and all that kind of stuff.
I've been in one that's made squeegees
and components that go on commercial
floor cleaning equipment. So the
stuff that runs up and down the hallways in the
building, you know, somebody's driving around.
I've been at
companies
that a lot of stuff where components
go in the big bridge crane assemblies.
That was always funny. People said,
you have a sample product you can show me.
And I'd say, sure. Back a 40-foot
flatbed up and we'll load one up for you.
Because it was big,
heavy steel stuff.
A company that made punch press tooling.
You know, people buy
the punch presses they need to tool. It's like the
drill bits that go in your drill, right?
So the
tooling for that.
Window and door components,
med device. Yeah, I don't know.
That's a lot of it right there.
But it's all different industries.
You were Tony Stark at one point.
All right. Welcome in
to Vision Pros Live.
With Jackson Calame. I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs
and guest leaders who are
building fantastic visions out there.
What's up and welcome
into another episode of Vision Pros Live.
I'm your show host Jackson Calame, founder and
CEO of First Class Business.
I'm excited to have Bruce Roles on today.
We got an OG
of the manufacturing industry.
Bruce may not know that term, but an original
gangster from the
manufacturing industry who has such
a depth of knowledge from
the years that he spent in the business
that this is a type
of person that entrepreneurs need
to be sitting down with. Entrepreneurs of
all industries and understanding the perspective
and the decades of his wisdom.
I honor that.
I find it sacred
when you can crack open the mind
of somebody who has
just as much depth of background as he
has in economy. So we're going to be talking
about operational leadership. We're going to be talking about
manufacturing and I'll throw some curve
balls in there as well, of course.
Then there's the sponsors. Before we dive
in. So we got ColdClick. ColdClick
is what we use for our LinkedIn
automation. It's a big part of
our top of funnel distribution plan.
By the way, I talk
about this all the time. I could probably even
put Facebook as a sponsor and
Facebook ads. I could probably, you know, a lot of different
things that we use for distribution. My
virtual assistants who help us with that. There's
a lot of mechanisms. You don't want your eggs
in one basket typically, at least.
I think that's a good principle to follow.
But with that said, this is the one
I like to share with our audience frequently
because I like promoting Art
Hoffman. He
is not Mark Zuckerberg,
but he is a wonderful man who
has done a lot to
make sure to help our business with our
growth. So with LinkedIn automation,
the point is not to
be pesky to as many people as possible.
It's to intrigue and attract
as many people as possible so
that the right people who are in the right position
can move forward and say, hey, you know what,
I kind of need that. Or hey, yeah, I want to work together
on that. And then that flows
really well. You got to get
your messaging right for it. Number two
is Simply Fast websites. Came across
this program from
Shane Michael and I was like, man,
if I was in a position where I was starting
over or I
didn't have a website and I was brand new to
the game, this would have saved me
hundreds of hours, possibly
I think thousands of hours. In addition
to making sure that I, you know,
somebody could just sat me down and said, Jackson,
don't focus on your website. Focus
on building your productivity
for your business model and talking to
people. Let somebody like Shane just
do the website for 179 bucks
and give him the information he needs
and just forget about it for a while. Move forward
with the profitable aspects
of your business. Busy as
broke, my friends. Getting stuck playing
with websites. It's
not the end all solution. My
oh, I don't know, third or fourth website.
I launched a web development
company. This is a great
story, by the way. jcaldigital.com
you can check it out. That was my original agency
after several different companies.
It wasn't even finished. If you scrolled
down, you would have seen header one,
header two, header three. I
signed five website
clients with a unfinished
website myself. Why?
Because I had a background in web development
and I had other clients to showcase.
But what it proved to me is you don't
have to be perfect to win.
You have to be great at what you do.
You have to be a great communicator. You have to be willing to serve
and get the work done. If you show up for that type of
ambition, tenacity, diligence,
then you have a very good shot at winning
contracts and helping people move forward their
projects. They really don't care about
you. They care about what you're able to do
to serve and help them when
you're a stranger knocking on their doors.
So I digress from that.
But best wishes to all of you who are getting started
in the entrepreneurial space.
Make wise decisions. Be efficient with your time.
The Water Project.
We are so blessed and lucky to
have access to this
in most of our houses. I don't think there's
very many people this CNN who don't have
quick and easy access to water. I love
promoting the Water Project. They're
helping millions of people. Well,
there's millions of people who need help.
They help as many people as we help fund
them to help. And what's really cool
is they actually let you pick the community
that you're providing
the money to. And so
if you don't have the money to give right
now, I know COVID economics has been hard
on people, then make sure that
you share this with people. That's an opportunity
to hopefully give back. Maybe
your cousin or your relative
ends up giving $10,000. You never know.
But what's really cool is if you give to this,
you get to see the outcome of the project
because they track it with photos.
You know, and they showcase
what they built in the community and area.
And having a
water well or a sand dam
that creates, you know, they teach you about how this
process works too, which is kind of cool.
But there's just so many people
in this world that help. So if you can think of
a cause that you feel in your heart
is more important or more effective,
do me a favor and just drop that in the
comments. We're not here to fight about it.
We're here to give. We're here to help.
We would love to see your participation in that.
So without further ado, I'm going to
be bringing Bruce on. Let me
go to his page real quick just so you can
kind of see that right before I bring him
on stage. And
there we go. So here's Bruce.
He's got BMRBUSOP.com.
OK. And this
web BMRBUSOP,
it'll be in the show notes. You're welcome
to check it out there. So fractional
COO, director GM
and leveraging leadership
experience in manufacturing, actually
like getting into the nitty gritty with the
business that needs manufacturing
support. We'll see what areas he
helps with. Beyond that, I'll get
his take on who should be listening. Without further
ado, Bruce, welcome to Vision
Pros Live.
Good morning. Glad to be here. Morning.
Happy to have you, man.
So as I mentioned right
there, Bruce, who do you feel should
be listening right now?
And why beyond the 30 years of
experience? What are some nuts and bolts of why they
should be listening?
The
who is, I guess, anybody
that's either interested in
how some of this
independence base works with
the kind of opportunities
that are there for them. And then at the
other side of that, obviously, are the
small and medium-sized
business owners,
CEOs, presidents, those
sorts of people.
There's a real transformation
going on out there
in terms of the kinds of
resources that are available
to companies that are small
in size that never were
available before.
An example is there's
been financial folks out
there that help small companies with their cash flow
and all those sorts of things. But when
you transition into what's going on,
I only know a handful of people doing
what I'm doing, which provides
that operations leadership
to small manufacturing companies.
Before this transformation
that's going on out there happened,
those small companies
couldn't get to people like me.
They couldn't afford them, and
or there wasn't enough work to justify
bringing them on. And they
had to wait until their company grew to that
size. Well, the way things are working
now in this transformation
that's happening, these
small companies now have access to
people like me that are
senior level, executive
level people in
literally every discipline, whether it's
finance or marketing or HR
or operations
to be able to come in and help them at a
price that they can afford and
work on that content they have.
It might only be a day or two
a week. And now
it's a resource that's available.
So, again,
this transformation, small
companies
that have never had access, the
senior, experienced
level people now do.
There's a whole lot of
people that can sit in on this and learn from
all of that.
Now, I'm going to guess here, and you can say, no
Jackson, that's wrong. Here's what it is.
The transformation you're talking about,
are you talking about fractional leadership?
Yes, that's a label that
people have put in front of it. Turns out
this kind of stuff's been around for a lot
longer than that term's been around.
Fractional has really become
the term in the last
four or five years. You're talking about it coming
out as mainstream now.
Now the supply and demand is
much clearer, so the connection
between executives and companies
is happening at a faster rate. Is
that correct? Yes, and it's the
rate that what it's happening at is
the rate at which these small and medium
sized companies become
aware of these resources
that are available.
There's a little bit of a two piece sell job.
You've sort of got to get them to understand what's available
to them, and then you can talk about
what you provide.
And I really
bridge that and come at it a little bit differently
than some of the fractional people do,
in that I just merely say,
you know what, I provide operations leadership
support to small
and growing manufacturing companies.
So if you're small and growing and you need some ops
leadership help, we can
call it whatever we want. We can call it fractional, we can
call it whatever we want. I'm available
and people like me
in their disciplines are
available in bite sized pieces
that they can afford.
I love it, man. And you know,
I'm going to pick on your age.
I hope that's okay.
It's something that, I mean,
so in marketing, you have
a unique selling proposition,
and there's another term in marketing most marketers don't know,
and that's the UA, the unfair advantage.
Right? So for instance,
when somebody says,
hey man, like, how do you know this is cancerous?
And they go, I'm a doctor.
Mic drop.
You know, like,
okay, that makes sense.
Right? You know, how do you know about
operational leadership? You know,
30 years in manufacturing.
Yeah.
I do this. I go,
this brain here.
Right. The hair color
or the brain, one of those two.
Yeah. It's all about the color.
It's all about the color.
It's getting fun. It is.
But here's the key, though.
There's so many people, Bruce,
who are scared to make the plunge
or who aren't aware
of this opportunity. So I'm really glad
that you called that out because you're right. The opportunity
is broader. Yes, on the
ownership and business side.
But if we're calling more people
and you're inspiring more people with
your depth to come into play here,
it's going to be a great thing for the economy
and for everybody. The more
people are realizing this is a great opportunity.
So when you mentioned resources available,
do you mind expanding on that, too?
What are the resources are you referring to
that made this possible?
The people. The people
are the resources. The people like me
that have stepped into the space
and are now providing
businesses with
access to us
that they didn't have before.
And where is it
going to go in the economy? We're
so much at the front end
of this thing. I don't
think we even know. But
the numbers
I know people that have jumped into
LinkedIn and done searches on
Fractional. And you go back
four years ago and it was maybe in the
thousands. And now you go on
LinkedIn and you do that. And the number
of people that are showing up in that space
are literally in the tens of thousands
and growing every day.
And it's not just here. It's not
just this country. It's happening
everywhere. I've got people reaching
out to me from across the
pond wanting to talk about
Fractional workspace. And I'm
a manufacturing ops guy. And so that's
an intrigue for them to talk to. This is
happening everywhere. This is not a US
deal. You got a really great
point. I'm really happy you keyed in on that because
I've been kind of hard on the Fractional reality
lately. I'm kind of speaking not
against it, but
dampering the process. Art Hoffman from
Coldclick and I had a chat. He wanted me to target
Fractionals. So we did that for a little
while, which is I think how you and I got
connected. And I
started to notice a trend though. And
that's that with any Red Ocean,
right, and this is becoming a Red Ocean,
where there's lots of people involved
in the opportunity.
You then have to learn how to sort
the pretenders from the contenders.
And so there's a lot of young people,
not that that's the only
qualifier, but a lot of them
have never been an executive in their
life. And they've also never
been a chief officer.
And now they're claiming these titles of
Fractional chiefs.
And so there's a byproduct
of that too. There's a lot of companies that are
hiring irresponsibly. They don't actually know what a
chief is. They bring in a chief by title
who has no idea how to work
across the sea level plain. And
that's just part of the progress. So I need
to get off my high horse with that.
Realize, because I was saying Fractionals
fracture companies.
How can they not? They're Fractional.
That's exactly what happens. But
that there's also, there's room
for, if I could find just
people who, if I could learn
as a business owner, right, as a business
owner, if business owners learn to
filter and interview
properly, now
you're going to end up with Fractional execs
who actually know what they're doing and
actually know how to make moves
without having to spend the 40 hour work
weeks to do so. Fair said? Fairly
said? Yeah.
There's a
number of thoughts that run through my mind.
And some
of this is,
when things catch fire and go fast,
crazy stuff happens.
Right. And I
don't use the term Fractional
when I talk about myself,
because it's literally gotten to the point where
I don't know who I'm talking to, what
their understanding is Fractional is.
They might have zero understanding, they don't even
know what it is. Right. So they think
they know what it is and they don't.
They think it's something different.
I mean, I talked to a president of a company
and he was talking to me about a Director
of Ops position and I thought he was talking
to me about it in the space that I'm in.
And I said, well, you know, I'm not interested in W2
work. And he said,
that's okay. I'm not interested in
Fractionals either. And I, so I
thought I'd have a little, see where this goes,
kind of thing. And I said, well, I don't do Fractionals.
He goes, oh, what do you do? And I explained
what I do, which is really the, in
the realm of the definition of a Fractional.
And he found it very intriguing.
And so I don't know what his definition of
Fractional was. Can you give us what that was? What did you say to him?
What did I say?
I say, I come in and engage with companies
wherever they're at in their processes
from an operations perspective,
try to understand where the problems are,
sit down with the leadership of the company,
peel back the layers to understand the revenue
flow, what's the growth of the company
look like, and make sure that what they think
are the problems that they, that
they have are really the problems
and not symptoms of the
real problem. And then we'll
put a plan together around that.
It may be that there's already
somebody who's trying to be an ops leader there.
My job is not to come in and
displace them, it's to come in and try to
enhance them and help them.
They could have got moved into something where the company's
grown so fast, they don't know what they're doing.
And they come in and augment that
and raise that person.
And when I went through that kind of
an explanation, and when I got done, he goes,
that's really intriguing.
And we continued on and had more conversation.
That's why I don't use a Fractional.
So many people started to,
oh, you're an independent whatever you are,
you're a Fractional.
No, no,
there are this or there are that.
I know of another guy that
he suddenly discovered
the term Fractional, he goes, oh, I guess I have a Fractional
business. And he
started to pile into that.
And along the way, him and I had a conversation
and I think he had gotten to the point where
no, there's consultants,
there's Fractional's, and
there's contractor project people.
And he continued to talk to people
and I watched his postings on LinkedIn.
He finally got up to 13 lanes
that people can be in in an
independent state
doing something.
And he quit counting after that.
And the point is there's a lot of different things
people can do independently, but if you're going to put
the label Fractional on yourself,
it's something very specific.
And it's this engaging in the company
on a part-time basis, so to speak.
And you've got to be
willing to straddle the strategic
with the tactical in that you're
going to put the vision and the plan together
for them. And then I believe ops
leaders have got to be a bit
of a visionary, seeing around corners,
where is this company heading? What is this operation
got to look like? You got to be able to see what
others don't. And then you've got to
roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty and get in
there with them because these smaller companies just don't
have the resources to do that
work. And that, I believe, applies to, I don't care
if you're in finance or in marketing or
in operations.
And some of these people just want to be strategy
and I'm like, no, that's more consulting. Nothing
wrong with that. But know who you are
and know how to present yourself.
Thanks for geeking out with me on what's
called the features.
This is a phenomenal lesson for
people who need to understand salesmanship
and the difference in features and benefits.
The difference in pitching somebody
and listening to somebody, right?
And what their needs are, not getting caught up on
the semantics or the word choice
of title and things like
that. So, Bruce, let's dive in
to manufacturing and operational
leadership. What's your vision for
those who you serve?
I'll start it in the arguably
unassumable that
when that company has reached out
to me, that leader, that CEO,
that president has reached out
to me and said, you know, we need to connect
and have a conversation.
My first assumption is they got
some kind of problem. There's
something's going on and they don't know how
to fix it. And
so my, that vision
becomes about, let's go in,
let's make sure, like I said earlier,
let's make sure we're really talking about the real problem.
And when
we talk about those things, we can both understand
it. So we understand where we're
starting at. Then we can talk about
where do we need to get to?
And as we dial that together,
the underlying plan becomes,
okay, how do I get out of here?
My goal is not
to come in and stay.
My goal is to come in and help them through
wherever they're at and to move on.
And if they're growing fast enough or they don't have
an ops leader, maybe I'm that
bridge to when they, you know what, you need
to get somebody in here full time now and I'll help you
find them because I know, I know
what you need. If it's that they've
got somebody in there who's trying to live up
to it, help them through that assessment
of making sure they've got what they
think they have there and then help
that person become
what they need to be and then get
out of there. And I help
them not just by telling them what they need to do, but
it's their coaching and mentoring and doing
the work with them. Again, we're back to getting our hands
dirty.
And it's a little bit like the parent behind
the kid on the bike learning to ride the two wheel. Your
hand's on the seat, it's off the seat. It's on
the seat, it's off the seat. And all of a sudden the kid turns
around, they're two blocks down the road,
and you're way back there and they go, oh, I guess I know
how to do this now. And that's when I
leave. So when do I
leave?
I like that. You articulate
that journey really well. So they get
to the end of that, they get to that vision. Now
what's life like?
For them?
Yeah. Yeah. Well, they're
on to, you know, if it's the point where
I left because we hired
somebody full time, yeah, they're in the
next chapter of growth. Good luck.
And you send them on their way.
If it's that there was somebody
there and you're trying to bring them along and
elevate them into what they really need to be and
how that all needs to work
in the world of operations,
then I
fade out of there and watch them
continue on their way. And maybe they need
to bring me back at some other point
because now we're dealing with this
kind of thing. So
yeah.
Does that answer that? Yeah.
It does. It's I mean, it gets right
down to the nuts and bolts of it.
You know, and I you know, as well as I do,
you can you can paint a
vivid, beautiful picture with words,
but that that outcome is going to look
different for everybody on what they want to do.
They want to play more golf. Do they want to
run their office full time? Do they want to have more
balance their family? There's lots of realities,
but that's the thing is you're
not boxing people in. I'm okay with
that. Yeah. Yeah.
So what's your vision for you? Maybe
box you in a little bit. So what
do you see for yourself on the horizon?
Well, I
this was a growth thing. I didn't have any
I didn't have anybody doing what I was doing
as I came into this. So I
had to go through a process of what does this even
look like? And I heard about other
fractional people having
you know, four, five, six, seven
clients at a time. Well, I figured out when I
got the three that that was too many.
And I and I coupled
that with the kind of lifestyle I was trying
to live. Part of why did I get in the business
for myself? And I went, it's too
many. I can't service all of them. It's too many.
It's taken up too much of my time. It's too many.
And I had paired that back until
I found that sweet spot
of it's kind of one client at
a time, maybe two. And it's sort of a
24, 30 hour
a week kind of an engagement
that ebbs and flows. And
that gives me enough time to run and build this business.
And spend a lot of time doing
what I like to do, which is networking with
other people and trying to find ways
to help them and elevate them.
It's just, you know, what do you call that?
Pro bono or what? You know,
I'm not charging for that.
And yet have enough
personal time. And I
finally, I think I've found that.
The business has done well enough.
I've been doing this for almost four years.
The business has been doing well enough.
I'm able to, you know, when there's no clients,
that's OK. Let's breathe.
Let's go do some other things, redirect.
And now I'm finally at a stage in life.
We're back to this again.
How much more to this
do I want to do? And what level of engagement
do I want? And so it's really
I'm clipping over to that lifestyle
side going, what do I want life
to look like? And where
does this fit into that?
And part of what I want it
to look like, I want to stay engaged with
people out there and helping them.
There's so many people trying to start businesses like
this that I'm able to help. There's so many
people in job transition, particularly
at the executive levels
that I'm able to help. There's a lot of things that are
the same about those with messaging
that you're putting out about yourself and what
are you about? And I want to spend time
doing that. And if I can work with a client,
you know, a couple of days a week,
that income's nice too. And it
just keeps augmenting what we're going to do
in the next phase.
And I think I've finally found it.
People tell me when I talk about it, they say, boy,
it seems like you found it.
And I am. I'm so
glad I've gone down
the path that I've gone.
I got asked one time by a person trying
to consider this. And I think what he was looking for
is the reason why not to go down this path.
He said, what's your biggest regret?
And I said,
biggest regret? He goes, yeah. And I said,
I don't even have a regret.
That's how good this path
has been for me.
It's not a path for everybody,
just like everything else out there
isn't a path for everybody.
Not everybody can do what you do,
Jackson. That's your path. That's where
you found your spot and
your place. And there's a lot of people
doing that. Yeah, doing what you
do or doing something similar to what you do.
But that's their
path. I couldn't do what you do.
I think it's really cool. I think it's really
neat. But
I end up being on this side of the interview
process and these sorts of things.
Well, it's vice versa.
That's a beautiful
factor of if we
could help the world, if I had
one massive wish that could occur,
it would be that everybody
moves into a life of abundance.
Right? It's to have
the ability to have confidence
without being accused of arrogance.
To know you're beautiful without
feeling like you're calling everybody else ugly.
And realize that it's
OK that everybody wins.
That you don't have to win at somebody else's
expense. And that's what you're referring to.
And I know what I'm
capable of. And I'm like,
as I talk to people
that come to me
so spun up on some things and I
start to unravel it.
I've had people say, I wish I would have talked to you
two years earlier. You would have saved me a lot of time.
Or, God, I love
your brutal, blunt honesty. I tell people,
I'm just going to tell you the way I see it from my chair.
And if you don't like it,
treat it as one man's opinion. And on the way
out the door, throw it in the trash.
I'm sorry, that's
me. But what I try to get people to understand
is really, look at that
personal side of life.
How do you want to live? What do you want to do?
And then when you cross over in this spot about,
OK, I need some money. I've got to generate revenue.
Where's that
passion?
Where's that stuff that you're really interested in
intersect
with what you're really good at?
Because I don't care what it is. I don't
care if it's skiing, skating, doing what
you do, do what I do. Somebody's
making money at it.
Go find
your space.
And if you can get it to find well enough,
you will find
there's plenty of people out there that want to help you
succeed at that. And they're
not going to charge you an arm and a leg to do it.
Because
they relish in
the fact the lights are coming in
for you and you're succeeding and you're moving
forward. That's what I find
to experience.
I love it. That's why we launched passionpro.org
as well.
So we've got a whole free program
on helping people uncover their passions.
And it works for those
who, it works very well
for those who take it seriously.
And it doesn't work for those who don't.
And that's OK. You know you
and whether you're willing to be open
about those realities or not.
Let's dive into a darker area.
What's your worst leadership experience
ever, Bruce?
It's going to be a leader that
you've been led by,
one that you've seen and witnessed
on television, or your own
experience. I've been on the
receiving end of some
pretty harsh things.
If I go back to early in my career,
literally,
I don't think I was out of
college three or four
years. And the
company I was working for, we had a big,
it was a program that they won
and we were going to need to set up
new manufacturing operations
to be able to absorb this and
make these products. And we needed to do
it quickly. And
there was a team of three of us and we put this
package together and it was going,
back in the day, it was going to be a few million dollars
so you can imagine what it would be today.
And we walked in and met
with the leadership
of the company for that division.
We sat down and put it all out in front of them
and I started to talk about it. And
the leader literally said, I don't like the
format any of this is in. It's not the format
that we're looking for.
And he pushed, there was some paper
there and he pushed it hard enough that it
got just a little airborne.
It hit me.
And I'm like,
wow.
Okay. I mean, I'm a
greenhorn, right?
This is how business works?
Okay.
Well, we got through that. We got them what they
wanted. We got the project approved and we moved on.
But you remember
that as a,
my God, don't ever be like that.
No matter what you do.
Later in
my career more recently
with a company I was working on with
some lean transformation stuff,
was trying to get the leadership team more
engaged with the VPs and everybody.
And they were all willing to accept the leader of the company.
And we were in
his office and the people were up on the table
and it was everything I needed to know about what
you're talking about is right over there in that drawer
over there and
case closed.
And we were talking about stuff that involved
culture transformations and things
like that. And I was like,
whoa, there's another
data point. Don't
be like that. Listen to the people.
And I really have
tried to become somebody who
when I work with
a business there's problems and they need
to be solved. And the people
that know where the real problems are
and what's really broken
and not working
are the people doing the work.
I don't care what their job
is. I don't care if it's making widgets on the floor
or a buyer in the
purchasing department.
They know where the problems are. Now if
we're going to go fix things
we have to go talk to those people. We have
to build relationships with those people
and let them know we want
to know what they're struggling with.
And I want to know what they think we should
do about it.
No matter how absurd it might seem to me.
And we've got to get behind those
people and let them drive
those solutions.
And again, I don't care what kind of business you're in.
And empower them.
They know where the problems are. They've got
ideas. Some of those might take the company
to the knees. So you might want to go cautiously
about how you go about some of this stuff.
And let them lead it.
And I just get behind them and go, let me
know where the problems are and I'll go get those out of your way.
I love this.
Some of that comes from some
of that early stuff I ran into
where, now this is
the way it is.
It doesn't
mean I've been perfect at that over
my journey. It doesn't mean I haven't
stubbed my toe and banged my head
into the wall and stuff. But you try to
learn from it and go, okay, what did I do
wrong there so I don't do
that again?
Here's what I learned from my generation though.
There's some really valuable truths in this.
So that first person who
pushed that contract back at you and it
hit you. They're fairly aggressive.
Maybe in modern society we
would label them harsher than that.
And you
guys still won the
contract.
Did I understand that correctly?
You still brought them on as a client.
We had gotten
the contract to manufacture
this stuff. What I was working on
was the proposal, the management,
about what we were going to have to set up
for a manufacturing line, how much money we were
going to spend to do that. And we needed
the approval to do that so we could go do what we were supposed to do.
Here's my point. You guys made it work.
You made
it work. You saw the bigger picture.
In modern society,
a lot of young leaders
want to execute
the leader with flaws.
It's, no, I'm done.
I'm out of here. I'm not doing this.
And there's this finite judgment of
they offended me, I'm done.
They don't speak to me that way, I'm
out.
There's
a healthy point of
there's toxic relationships
that should not be
engaged with,
of course. However,
we also run the risk
of leaving the entire
organization susceptible to
far worse misery
if we don't give the leader
with flaws grace
and come in and make a
profound impact in areas that
systematically improve the lives
of others. I think there's a harmonic
balance in between those
two realities that you showcased
in that particular scenario that,
again, modern leaders,
especially young leaders, and I say leaders,
I'm talking about the people that were
in your positions, the people
who are the rookie leaders coming in,
they're able to make an impact,
and we've,
if our society opens
back up to being more graceful
with people's flaws,
all ships will rise.
Personal opinion.
Yeah.
I think
I concur, well, I know I concur with it.
I think I would phrase some of it
this way, that maybe back in the day the
pendulum was too far one way,
and now it's
swung way too far the other way.
Right. And we gotta find
that middle where
you're not gonna like what
your leader says sometimes. You're gonna
disagree with them. Yep.
Welcome to life.
They're gonna use the wrong word
to describe, I've done that.
I've used a word that meant something to some people
that I had no idea it meant that.
Had I known that, I wouldn't have said
that. I did some
real serious fence mending.
And
I've been there.
I speak Spanish. It happens to me all
the time in the Spanish language.
It's not easy to do that.
I,
people are gonna do that.
And we gotta find a way to work with
that. We're not, you know,
you're right, there's times where somebody
in the leadership role says something and right
away it's behead him.
Yeah. Send him to the gallows.
He's done. She's done. Yeah. Or
does something incredibly human and
selfish, right?
And we're executing people for being
human. And that's a real
reality. And we gotta find
that middle.
We'll win more if we find that middle. I think
so. Yeah. I mean, I hope people
experience like.
I was just gonna add that I tell people
in
leadership, there's times
where you gotta be prepared to be the
and it starts with a D.
And if you're not willing
to be that on occasion, you're not
gonna make it. Yep. I mean,
you don't do that as a habit.
You don't do that as routine. But sometimes
somebody's gotta step up and be the boss.
And say, this
is what we're doing.
And then you
can step back and now we move forward.
It starts with a D.
You gotta be willing to be a dummy
at times. You gotta be
willing to be the dirt bag
at times.
I guess. You gotta be willing to be the
difficult leader at
times. I got you. I picked it up.
Yep.
All right, Bruce.
Let's dive into that best leadership experience.
What does that look like?
What's been the best leadership experience
you've been in?
You know, a lot of
it centers around probably the last full-time
job I had. And ultimately, when
I came in there, you looked at operations,
the manufacturing floor, and it was really
chaotic in
nature. Stuff was
going back and forth, inventories all over
the place. You name it and you could
put your finger on it.
And it was, this vision
started to develop about, we gotta
transform
this operation out here. We're not
gonna get where we need to get to
in the efficiencies. And I partnered with
the person who was the leader of the
supply chain side of the business.
They didn't like the way the warehousing
was, and so we were gonna transform
this. And so a smaller
group of us on leadership talked about
how to block the building out
in terms of what's the flow gonna
be. So port trucks are always moving one
direction. We got those big
pieces, and
then I turned it over to the production teams
and said,
your department's gonna be over here.
Your material's gonna come here and it's
gonna leave there. I need you guys to
tell me what that layout, where
do you wanna put what machines,
where do you wanna, how do you wanna do this?
And we turned it over to
the production supervisors and the production
people, the people that ran
the machines, to come up
with the layouts.
And all we did was just coach a little bit.
I might challenge them on a couple things, and I'm not
seeing this right, and there would be
some tweaks. But really what happened
in every department in terms of, and we moved
everything over the course
of about a year or so. We
moved, everything was in a new spot.
So big machines,
everything. And,
but that was those people
coming up with the way that
building should be laid out
and functioning, and they
owned it. And boy did they
help make it work as we transformed
it going forward. Yeah.
I love that example.
That, yeah.
I love that example. I think I got
that part, that one right.
So.
Well, here's what's really cool. You know,
the best leadership experience is often
often referred to as
the best mentor that somebody's had,
you know, and that's
one, and there's nothing wrong with that. But
what's really cool about your story is you're talking
about empowering the people
that you're supposed to be serving
as the leaders, and they
leveled up to the cause. What's really cool
if you're listening in right now, there's
a campaign that that reminds
me of that you can double down and learn
even more from. Look up
the Domino's Pizza
advertisement campaigns.
And you're going to have to go through probably
several on YouTube. I imagine some have changed.
But several years ago, it was almost a
decade now, the CEO or
president owner came out and said, Listen,
our pizza downright sucks.
It's awful.
And we realized that we've cut corners.
We've started using, you know,
not natural goods.
We've destroyed this and we're done.
You know, being a really crappy
pizza company. And they start
taking pizzas to one star
review people's houses and
saying, Hey, we're going to try the new
pizza. And they made this big turnaround, right? That was
step one. Step two, though, is
what I'm referring to. And step two,
they went to their general managers
and their workers and they said,
What do you hate
about working at Domino's?
And what do you want to see
happen? And so they did this
campaign where they actually publicized
it and they let the general managers
take sledgehammers to the
actual physical location
because that's what they hated most. And they
transformed the style of service
they were providing from within.
But it was a really neat way to
kind of do the type
of leadership you're talking about and also
leverage the ability to
rebrand themselves with that
opportunity. So thank you for
sharing that type of experience because
there are models out there.
There's people like you out there who can showcase
how to do that
effectively.
I'll have to go look that up because I
guess I'm aware of some of that.
But as you told it there,
they started in the right spot and that
was with VOC, Voice of the
Customer. Let's start there
and find out what's wrong with our stuff
and if we're going to change it, what's
right about what we think it
should be and not just
a bunch of Domino's folks in the
back room going, You know what, here's how we got to
make our pizza. Everybody will like this.
Let's go out and talk to the customers.
And in some
regard in that whole manufacturing
transformation I talked about,
my customers are those people
running those machines.
How do I help them?
How do I clear
their way? How do I take the frustration
out of the day when it took them
10 minutes to find the calipers?
Because somebody else thought it was better
to have two calipers on the floor
instead of one at every station.
You know, how do I
tell me where that stuff is
and we'll fix it?
And they don't believe you at first.
So they give you some of my secrets.
I tell entrepreneurs, your
most overlooked and
probably your most important funnel
is your recruiting
an HR funnel.
If you're forgetting
the value of those that you serve on a daily
basis within your own walls, you're not
paying attention to their needs,
they're going to have a really hard time paying attention
to the needs of the rest of the people you're trying to
serve outside of your walls.
So, yep, it's
both great. And yes, I agree with
VOC as well. Great, great call.
Well, with that said,
we are a little
behind schedule because there was just
so many powerful lessons already shared.
So for those of you who are listening,
in fact, I'll give you 30 seconds,
Bruce. If you had 30 seconds
to share one final powerful lesson
with visionaries, what would it be?
Here's how I talk about
them. When they start their businesses,
they
know there's a market for whatever they're stepping
into. And they get so
busy with that
their heads down and they're going
as fast as they can go and they're
doing as much as they can do.
And all of a sudden they
run out of their abilities to keep it going.
Too much to do,
can't handle it all. It's moving
into a new sphere that's beyond where
their wheelhouse is.
I just, I
I'll say two things. I hope
they lift their head up in time
to look around and go, oh,
my God, I need help.
Before they hit the wall.
And I
I say this with a little bit of jest.
We all hear about people that own and run
businesses. And if they're successful,
that is arguably not their first one.
That's probably their third one or maybe
their fourth one. And I say,
I think what happened was on that one
that was successful, they
picked their head up soon enough
they could get the help they needed before
they hit the wall. And I
would say to those
entrepreneurs, those visionaries in
those businesses,
the help's available now.
In this so-called
transactional space, the help's available.
You can afford it. You can get it.
It doesn't mean you're a failure
because you've got to go get help. It just
means you're at the next level.
Vision Pros, you heard it from Bruce
Rolls himself. The landing
page will contain all the links that you
need to reconnect. Don't hesitate to
comment if you have a question.
Like, share this with people. I think
it was an awesome, awesome interview. Bruce,
thanks for joining us today on Vision Pros Live.
Thanks for having me. I'm
glad to be here. I hope I helped somebody.
Everybody have a fantastic day. We'll see you on the next show.