have a little bit of, you know, therapists,
AKA counselor, AKA coach, mentor, guide,
all one in the same, right?
Versus trying to figure all this crap out by ourselves.
You know, like no way, not as entrepreneurs.
So what have been some of those profound chakras
or realizations, even if they're simple,
I have some really simple ones where I was like,
oh my gosh, how does it not know this as a human being?
Well, then I'm an entrepreneur, I realize it.
Right, I always knew, okay, learning is failure.
Failure is uncomfortable, it's hard.
But, and I thought I was like, I'm good at that.
No.
I know.
I'm good.
I know that.
I'm like, it's hard, it's so hard.
I was like, oh, courageous conversations.
I thought I was, you know, as an HR person,
coaching people to have this all the time.
And I found that, oh, oh, there's so much more
I need to learn about that.
Oh, that's a good one.
That's a great one because your leadership
and title and authority as, you know,
oh, I'm the HR director of Nike.
And so everybody comes to my office knowing that
versus I'm an entrepreneur and nobody gives a crap.
You know, it's like that's welcome to your new title.
Oh yeah, you'll go broke soon.
Oh yeah, so you mean you don't know what you're doing.
Oh, you can't get hired.
Right, you know, that's, yep, nope.
It's a huge dose of humility and reality.
Yes.
Well said.
What are your three favorite, not three favorite,
what are three books you recommend for visionaries?
Hidden Potential of Adam Grant,
Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown,
and Surrender, which is Bono's autobiography.
Cool, I like the diversity in that selection.
That's a lot of fun.
Well, when we come back, we might talk about
one or two more of those.
We'll definitely be diving into the workplace ecosystems
where humans and businesses can both thrive
win-win situations, opportunities with the wonderful
Mindy Honkoop, we'll be right back.
All right, welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
With Jackson Calame, I'm your show host.
We will be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs
and guest leaders who are building
fantastic visions out there.
Hey, what's up everybody?
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 Mindy Honkoop on today.
We're gonna be diving into the wonderful world of HR.
Why?
Because it's so overlooked in the visionary entrepreneur
space and we need more voices helping leaders
step up as leaders.
It's not as easy as it looks on the surface.
And if you're like, well, no crap,
no, it doesn't look easy on the surface.
All the more reason to be here and listen to what Mindy's got
and in terms of her background.
We'll go into that in just a minute though.
Before we dive into Mindy,
we're gonna talk about the sponsors,
the Wellness Shop 365 by Sean LeChuga.
He's this holistic health professional
that sees beyond the muscle building,
the exercises, the nutrition components of it,
meaning the supplements and the diets.
But they've got this 365 wheel of life.
And on the wheel of life,
they're taking an assessment of
what does your joy look like, your spirituality?
What do your relationships look like, your social life,
your career, your education?
I've never seen too many programs,
again, I don't know of a single program myself
that has that as an all encompassing approach
for your health and wellbeing.
And so when I saw this concept and I was like,
that's pretty raw looking wheel there.
Don't get me wrong.
We're not hiding from the fact that it's 2024
and that particular element of his needs updated.
That's exactly why I was attracted to say,
hey man, this is really cool.
What can we do with this?
He's got a wonderful family.
He's been a wonderful friend through the process.
He's actually working with me on the podcast now
and very potentially becoming a business partner
of first-class business as it is.
Then win, win, win situations
and in a life that's abundant,
you can see opportunities like that.
So I highly encourage you to pick his brain
on what he's doing and what he knows
from a health standpoint, the guy's an absolute genius.
The last spot, let's go over,
oh, that's just, we're pulling up.
If you're looking at the screen,
you'll see the transformation and simplification
of his brand taking place
so that people can understand the value
of what he's putting out there from an online perspective.
Guess what?
All of us as brands are constantly working
on the improvement of our online assets
because they all represent our past.
They were all published in the past.
We're all moving forward and progressing.
The last spot, speaking of,
when Melissa came on our show
and she shared about her view and vision for legal,
I was super interested in what she's up to
because she's a very high nurturer,
but she also has that ability to be a very diligent
and forward lawyer as well.
And she's trying to help small businesses,
medium businesses capitalize on the opportunity
to learn and understand how legal is supposed to work,
to simplify the processes as well,
and ultimately become kind of a gap in the medium
of those ultra expensive retainer legal counsel
that you might find on a dime
in a last minute crunch when you need it.
And the automated resources,
like LegalZoom that are out there,
there's a happy middle ground where,
I would say your best solutions exist.
She is one of those solutions
that we're very excited to expand with ourselves.
So I'd highly recommend engaging with her,
seeing what's up, especially in relation to the,
what's it called?
The business ownership information.
There's some, my CPA is all over it,
Melissa's all over it right now.
And it's, we've got to have new paperwork filed
about our ownership.
And if we don't, there's gonna be $500 fees per day.
Like those are things that you might wanna talk to
Melissa about and others,
not from the standpoint of, oh my gosh,
let me move forward with these individuals
because I'm scared,
but realize that they're also there to help you
on all sorts of other realities too.
You just have to be willing to open your mind and listen,
what else can you do for me?
We're gonna be doing that with Mindy Hancoop today.
HR is often known for people with glasses
that have dust on them.
People who are not like very good with humans,
I run into the irony of most HR realities.
They're there to enforce the rules.
If they weren't in HR, they would be in the library,
running the library.
I can see Mindy laughing in the background.
It's like, oh my gosh, this dude's roasting me.
No, Mindy is the exception to the rules.
She's one of the amazing human beings in the process
that really understands people.
I met her about six months ago.
We talked about her pre-show
and she wanted to get more teed up and more ready
for this experience and process.
And that's something that I honor and respect
to help you do too.
So as we bring her on stage, let me pull up,
before I bring her on stage, her very pretty bio.
She's working at Microsoft, working at,
what was it one of the other kind, Expedia.
That one was one of the places
that she worked in HR leadership.
She's been, it says she's been an HR leader
for over 20 years, but she doesn't look too much older
than 20, so maybe she started in child labor
and maybe that's what got her interested in HR to begin with.
We'll find out about that a little bit.
But no, in all reality guys,
what I saw with her branding,
and I'm gonna go over to her brand Agile HR,
I was like, wow, she really understands the power
of design in the process of elevating her brand as well.
For a starter brand, I was just really impressed
with the organization as well.
So she's planning implementation
and support organizational effectiveness.
And again, as I kind of grilled her on HR
and what that looks like, I was like, yep,
she knows her stuff.
I definitely got to get her on my stage.
And so without further ado,
Mindy, welcome to Vision Pros Live.
You are not muted, there you go.
Thank you so much, it's such a pleasure to be here.
Absolutely.
So I know you didn't,
I don't think you started in child labor,
but you've been at this for 20 years.
I would love to know what are the highlights
that you feel are important for people
beyond what we can see on your LinkedIn and on the page?
So I started in college,
I started, I thought I was gonna be a social worker.
That was my dream.
I was passionate about how do we make a positive impact
for people in our communities.
And so as a social worker,
really learning about the ecosystem that they're in
and really how do we think about where are they at today?
Where's their current state?
What's that future desired state?
And then how do we come along and guide them
and to create those kind of the,
what are those right next steps
move towards that future desired state?
And I found out very early in the work that I wanted to do
that my ability to impact was very limited
as a social worker.
And I also became exposed to workplaces
and also saw the benefit that that social work lens
had within the ecosystem of work
and being able to take the practices and the frameworks
and putting that in the place of work
and how that could really equip making a difference.
And so that's where I quickly jumped into the world of work
at Microsoft early in my career.
I love that.
Vision Pros, let's listen in.
Vision is our foundation in my opinion.
That's my business foundation
and the next level beyond that is culture.
And the culture is facilitated, created
by a clear vision that attracts leaders to the culture.
So in other words, as you're getting started
and building a very base foundation of what you're doing,
you're either attracting or repelling people
from the process.
And that's why my conversations with people like Mindy
are so important to me.
It's how do we establish that from the get-go
so that the foundation is strong
and that we're not putting this off for 10 years
or five years or five months
where we've now got a madhouse and a circus
and it's hard to piece them all back together.
What are your thoughts on that, Mindy?
It feels like you're just inside my soul.
Cause that is the foundation
and that's often what gets overlooked.
Cause often as we start companies,
founders are really excited.
They have people around them that they've worked with
for a period of time.
They already know how each other work.
There's like an unspoken way of working,
a culture amongst them.
And then maybe it's five people, right?
And at that time, they may have an idea of a vision
that they have, but as they start to quickly grow
and scale, as you bring in investors that can,
if we haven't codified that,
if we haven't gotten really clear,
and then as we bring in new people,
all of a sudden at a hundred people,
we have these founder who had the best of intent
that realizes, oh my goodness, how did I get here?
And it's because they didn't take the time
to build that foundation with the vision.
And then how do we break that down into the culture?
Cause if we get the culture really clear,
we understand what are those culture competencies
or those skills that tie back to those values
that keep those ways of working that we appreciate here,
that we incentivize, that we encourage,
how do we keep that top of mind?
And that's through those competencies
that come from the culture that tie back to our vision.
Absolutely.
I'm gonna say, this feels so out of place for me even to say,
but I'm gonna say women are better at this than men are.
And when I say that, people who are feminine in nature
are better at this reality than men.
And look at it in terms of parties that you've attended.
When a man throws a party, it's often chaotic or boring.
They don't do that.
They do man cave, basement, let's play poker.
When women throw parties,
oh, like you would think that it was catered.
There's all sorts of dynamics and realities.
There's signage and all this stuff too.
I can't stress enough how important that is for
and how much it correlates with building a company.
If your party doesn't start off with a bang,
we've all been there to parties that kind of rise slowly
and organically and get a little bit better if we're lucky
in order they're awkward the whole time and you leave early.
Then there's the party that from the get go,
you get there and you're like, whoa, this is happening.
And you're accepted well, there's a host and all that.
Well, the same is very, very true
with running our company.
So I know I'm kind of diving a little bit too much
to those subjects a bit prematurely,
but again, you get me so excited about this stuff, Mindy.
What's your vision for those that you serve?
I mean, my vision for those that I serve
is that they realize they have dreams.
They want to be somewhere different.
They want a future desired state,
but because of the level of circumstances
or kind of where they're at,
they may feel like that's not possible.
And my hope for the people that I serve
is that they don't just think that this is a dream,
but that it becomes a reality.
And then I just get to be along for the journey
and to be a guide in that.
You have a much harder audience than most people, as do I,
which is the people without the hope.
That's a very hard audience to serve.
You know, the blue ocean of creating something new
that people aren't familiar with.
I know it sounds fun to be the first to,
but you have to first help people catch the reality
that they can hope for it before they're even able to see
what the outcome could look like on the other side.
And that's a big vision.
What's your vision for you?
I'm going to shift gears a little bit.
What do you see for yourself on the horizon?
I love this question.
I mean, my vision is about, through multiple platforms,
yes, the work that I do fractionally,
but also through thought leadership,
because it's exactly what you said.
People don't know what is possible if they've never seen
that or experienced themselves.
And so how do we create that level of awareness?
So my vision is to be able to kind of expand,
to be able to train other people to come and create
a group of Mindies.
And whether that's through certification or training,
I have a dream of maybe one day being a professor,
have a college program.
That sounds really big.
But I so think that it's a different way of thinking.
And it requires some additional scaffolding and framework
that doesn't exist today.
And so creating that and then being
able to deliver that to a wider audience.
Absolutely.
And it does sound really big.
And that's vision pros.
That's the essence of this show.
This is the place where you're welcome to share that.
Of course, some visions are sacred and meant for ourselves.
But I love that you shared that.
I'm looking forward to the day when
I get to speak on a Stanford Harvard stage,
because I have a 0.33 GPA.
I'm not a professor.
I'm not even a student.
And so the day that my actions continue
to take me towards those opportunities
will be a very empowering day for the individuals who
did not know how to maximize their university path.
So it's a matter of time.
And it's a matter of time combined with my actions.
Right now, I'm not really doing anything to attract that,
although we did just host the president of University of Texas
as a student president.
So maybe it's a little closer than I realize.
But again, we choose visionaries.
We choose to manifest and to also put our actions
into place with our beliefs so they can happen.
So I believe in you.
I'm excited for you.
And I caught up.
And I was like, oh my gosh.
I don't think I've actually ever shared that with anyone.
What you did share was the idea of leading
the fractional cell through the process.
You had not talked about the university component of it
beyond it.
But that was, I was excited.
I was like, oh, cool.
She sees this major opportunity to help people
at a much greater level.
And I just align with that.
So let's dive into dark territory.
What's the worst leadership experience that you've ever
had?
And this one, because I've seen, I mean,
I've experienced quite a bit of poor leadership
in my 20 plus years.
And it's-
We all know Microsoft's perfect.
And everybody who works there is named Jesus.
We've got plenty of stories.
All these Apple people are like, oh, I can't wait to hear.
I can't wait to hear all the trash about them.
Well, and just to create an amenity,
I think this speaks to a couple of leaders
that I worked with.
It was kind of, it had become so bad
that no one else wanted to work with these leaders, which
is really sad.
And so they're like, Mindy, you have this knack,
a superpower of just connecting with almost anyone.
And so then I was the person that said,
you go get to be the partner for these leaders that people
have run away from.
And I think why I pause and why I'm sad
is because often it's a lack of curiosity,
of listening, of understanding where that person's at,
of not just saying this.
It's about remembering everyone's humanity.
And there's something that led that person
to be acting out in a way that they are today.
And so sitting down with these leaders that have just
become so often, this shows up.
Their behaviors were showing up in, they were just shut down.
They had scarcity of mindset.
They no longer had trust.
And so were really leaning into command control,
really weren't absorbing and utilizing the talent
around them, and really felt alone.
They felt alone.
And because they didn't have trust,
they weren't trusting the team members around them.
And they weren't seeing their gaps and their blind spots
because they had stopped listening and leaning
into team.
And so it was about sitting with them and listening
and getting the emotion out.
Because a lot of times when you're at that point as a leader,
you've lost the ability to see the difference
between fact and emotion.
And it's about sitting with them and then
being able to ask the questions that
help create the self-awareness to start to try and get them
to open up and try to think about what is this current state
that we're in.
What would it look like to be different?
And what would it look like to feel different?
And what do we need to make that happen?
I'm kind of giving a full picture here
of because usually when I have a bad leader,
it's not that they're bad.
There's stuff behind it.
And it takes time to sit with them and to understand that.
My hope is always being able to find that seed within them.
And are we able to get them to access that to then feel
change?
That is one of the most champion level answers we've ever had.
And I can't emphasize that enough.
A minute ago, if anybody saw me when
you said that you went into that situation, I went like this.
I went, oh my gosh.
I have a hard time going into those situations with leaders
who are supposed to lead.
And then I go in with this expectation that's
unfair like most people and have a sense of judgment.
I'm still learning to overcome that.
My absolute favorite leader of all time
is who you remind me of.
And his name is Ben Ashby.
Benjamin Ashby.
I hope he someday hears this actually.
But he was the son of our mission president in Uruguay.
And there were missionaries who were specifically
designed to babysit certain companions.
That's what we called it.
And the ones who didn't want to be in the field.
And oh, no, I was a destroyer.
You did not waste my time as a missionary.
Absolutely not.
And I could not tolerate it.
I was like, why don't you just go home?
I'm sick of this.
I want to go out and help people.
And Ben was a babysitter.
And he turned those guys around almost every time.
And it just drove me passionately to look at,
how the heck does he do this?
How does he have the energy to do this?
How does he have the strength of character to do this?
We were 19 years old too.
And he had this capability to do this.
And again, I didn't see it that way at first.
It took me 18 months to realize, wow, I really
don't love other leaders.
I love those I serve, but get out of my way
so I can serve or come and help.
But don't slow me down.
That took me years of cultivation
to start to bury that fully.
So I love that you've been able to tap into that,
hone that gift, work with it for so long.
Because I believe you're 100% right.
We don't have bad people that we need to crucify.
We have people who have strange habits or processes,
need to be understood, can be opened up.
And what's cool is oftentimes, they
end up becoming the best leaders because they
want to move from exactly what they were as fast
and as far away from that as possible.
So way to go.
That's also a best leadership experience.
But for the sake of letting you share again,
what's your best leadership experience?
Best.
OK, so the best leadership are the ones that I love.
Actually, Adam Grant talks about this in The Hidden Potential
that I was talking about earlier.
He just crystallizes it so well.
For me, it's the leader that recognizes
the difference between coaching, critiquing, and cheerleading.
And it's that coach that truly is not just cheering you on,
but is advising and allowing you the room safely to fail
and to come back and really self-reflect on what happened
and to then, OK, what are we going to do different?
And think through that.
Or when you have the safe person you go to, and I need help.
And they're going to take the time with you to do that.
And there's a couple of leaders.
One of those is Kristen Graham at Expedia
very early on in my career that really modeled that for me
and the difference and really what do courageous conversations
look like.
And I learned so much within such a short amount of time
because of the advice.
Prior to that, I had a lot of cheerleading managers
who were lovely and great.
But the level of growth that I had underneath Kristen
was because of that coaching mentality and the time
that she took, the care that she had.
That's awesome.
Visionaries, that's one of the greatest secrets
and gifts of learning too is your ability
to meditate on the relationships that
emulate the ones that you're learning from.
So she's reading this book.
She thinks of the leaders she has in her life.
And now she's learning simultaneously
from the book itself and the practical experiences
that she's seen.
Same thing with what I did with Ashby there.
So when we can draw on our existing experiences
and how they correlate with intense purpose,
we can typically progress our results that much faster.
If you were to share though, if this
was your last opportunity to share a powerful lesson
with Visionaries from your experience,
what would that lesson be?
Last chance, no other lesson.
The one.
Oh man.
Oh, that's tough to pick.
Pick one.
Maybe it's also something that I'm always continuing to learn
is no matter how, even at 20 plus years in your experience,
that we're still learning and it's not to continue to listen.
And maybe you need to be listening even more.
Pausing in order to create that space for curiosity.
I think later in our careers and our experience, we may think,
oh, we got it.
We've done this before.
Just kind of jump in.
And I think that as I started Agile in HR a year ago,
that's something that I've been learning
is to slow down even more.
That is something that people like myself, old people,
talk about.
It's something that it's, there's this really cool book
that Andy Churchill talked about the other day.
It's called Escaping the Ivory Tower.
And in that case, it's about research.
But going to every, not just staying in your silo,
but going to everyday people and asking them about,
what are their opinions and thoughts on matters?
And that process of slowing down,
even though my grandparents, they
have a depth of wisdom about them because of all the years
that they've spent, they're quiet.
And people say, oh, it's because they're tired.
Not a lot of times.
A lot of times, they're very active people.
But they observe and listen and watch.
And there's this great power in depth to that.
So visionaries, I hope you apply it.
Let's dive into defining workplace,
defining ecosystems.
Let's start with ecosystems first.
What does that mean to you in terms of a workplace?
So in the terms of a workplace, first of all,
each one is uniquely different.
The ecosystem is the, it's first of all,
it's the organization.
It's the organization.
It's the people that have been brought together.
It's how do we work together?
It's the people process and the systems.
And that's not just technology.
It's the unspoken things.
That, to me, is the high level definition of the ecosystem.
Awesome.
I mean, feel free to hammer away on the accepts of that, too,
of, OK, so we got that definition of ecosystem,
the fact that they're all different.
That's a huge reality to understand
is that your organization is going
to be different than somebody else's organization,
even if you're both dentists.
Yes.
Especially if you're trying to model a dentist
and you have a restaurant.
You're not going to have a chef, most likely,
at your dental office or somebody cleaning teeth
at a restaurant.
That would be awkward.
But maybe we should.
Maybe that's a unique differentiator
that our restaurant needs to succeed.
Mindy, go ahead.
So talk to me further about that.
And then also, how does this relate
to creating one where both the humans and the businesses
thrive?
So I love that question because it's everything that I do.
So yes, so I think often, I think
it's important to remember that your organization is uniquely
different.
Because if it's not, then you're just like everyone else.
And there's a lot of choices out there.
And it's really understanding why are we existing,
who are we serving, and then who are the people that
are then working together to build that product
or that service or whatever, what your why is.
And that then ties us where you were talking about
with the vision, right?
And that helps it.
That speaks to your vision and then your culture.
And then what is that strategic?
How do we make that happen?
How do we make that a reality?
And so how do we then create that vision, that alignment
to be able to execute?
And that's where we think about the people in that.
Often within workplaces, we think about HR.
And it often feels, at least in the old way of working,
that HR was often, not for everyone,
but often on the island of misfit toys, I say.
They were often divorced from the organizational planning.
If we were doing that, if we were doing strategic planning,
it was separate from.
It was keeping the wheels on the bus.
It was the benefits, the payroll, the mitigation,
the compliance.
And it was often not tied to that strategic vision
or the strategy.
They were devoid of, which is where we get that breakdown,
when it gets to that founder we were talking about,
at 100 people.
Like, oh my goodness, how did we get here?
It's because we hadn't, how do we
start to articulate as we grow what our expectations are
of teams, of managers, of individuals?
And how do we speak to not just the financial KPIs,
but what are those human KPIs, how we are doing our work?
How are we getting to our results?
And once we have the employees here, they're smart.
How are we being able to create the space for their voice
to be within the decision making,
within the designing of the standard operating procedures,
of the tools that we're using, of how
we're working with our customers?
And then really that agile aspect
of if we are listening to our people,
if they're clear on what's expected of on them,
if we're all in the same boat rowing together
towards a common target, towards a common North Star,
how are we getting better at doing that?
How are we refining and iterating and taking each
other's feedback in order to continue to move forward
and to be able to innovate and be
able to continue to serve our customers
and really tie that employee experience
to our customer experience?
I mean, I think about thriving.
I think about that human care experience.
Our humans in our workplaces want to be valued.
They want to be seen and heard.
And so all the ways in which our ecosystem, in which we
kind of build that into our organizational capability,
that's why I think it's so important to balance people,
process, and systems.
One without the other, you start to see things fall apart.
And all that kind of ties into the recipe of thriving.
I could talk on and on, but I won't stop there.
Go, Mindy, go!
You've got this!
You've got this, like I'm off to the races with you!
Right?
People, processes.
And the third one?
Systems.
Systems, right?
So there's your three-legged stool.
Organizational capability.
Yeah.
Right.
There's that three-legged stool, which
doesn't stand unless you're super acrobatic on two legs
or one legs.
Then you can defy our logic.
But I'm with you on that.
Super important.
So the elephant, the herd of elephants that you just
described that we're supposed to eat, right?
Where do you start with that, with the people
that you're going to work with?
Where do they begin?
Because that's a drink from the ocean.
Yeah.
It's a lot.
What I start with is really understanding current,
what's currently going on in the organization.
Also, with whoever reaches out to me.
I don't want to look at that.
I'm just kidding.
They don't.
Or they don't know what questions to ask.
So it's first about, for me, it's about,
I'm asking a lot of questions.
And people want a magic pill, but there is no magic pill.
And unfortunately, the one thing that often HR people say
is, it depends.
But that's a true answer.
It depends.
It depends on the workplace, the situation, the people involved.
Like, we need to be asking questions.
So I often come in, and they're like, hey, Mindy,
what do you do?
And I have a very high level answer.
But then it is followed with a question.
And by then, I've kind of gotten a sense of,
what is their frustration?
Or what's keeping them up at night?
Or what are they dreaming about?
Sometimes, if the person's in a negative place,
they start in a positive.
Like, where do you want to be?
What are you hopeful for?
And what's keeping that?
What's getting in the way of that?
And it often is one of those three things.
It's the people process or the systems.
Or if they start with the process,
and we dig a little bit deeper, and we find out
what that root cause is, it could be people.
But it's really about the presenting problem.
When someone comes with a presenting problem,
it often isn't the problem.
And so it's really kind of in that discovery phase,
it's about getting to that deeper problem
and then working through a heat map.
So you have to start from that point of,
where is that pain point?
I don't want to just walk them through the whole thing.
We got to start somewhere.
And we need a baby step into it,
because they maybe never have seen.
It may be employee handbook.
Now, I don't do employee handbooks.
That's not my superpower,
but I'll find someone for you that can.
But let's talk a little bit,
what are you hoping to accomplish with that?
Because it's not often just that handbook,
or how do we actually-
We have a handbook, Mindy, come on.
Everybody's supposed to have a handbook.
But usually when you get deeper,
they're like, oh, I hadn't thought about it that way.
What would it look like to have a second conversation
with you, a third conversation?
And usually the leaders that you're able
to start to move from more of the traditional HR,
where they just saw it as payroll and benefits.
And they really start to see,
especially with the small medium businesses
I'm working with,
where it's really that business acumen,
the China chief of staff being able to understand,
how do we understand the outcomes
that you're trying to achieve,
and how do we align the people initiatives with that?
Absolutely.
When I was a young entrepreneur,
getting ready to launch my own organization and such,
I found out about org boards and how we needed org charts.
And so I was building that,
I believe it was at Restaurant Connect,
where I started the process of trying to find our org board.
But then I was like,
what if I designed the Universal org board
to solve all problems for everybody?
And I spent like four hours on that.
Coming to realize again,
the difference between restaurants and dentists and how,
oh man, that sucks, this is impossible.
It literally is impossible for you to create
the perfect org board for an organization,
meaning who's gonna be doing what in your company?
And then later learning like,
oh, and not just who's gonna be doing what,
but what is what?
How do you define that versus how they define it?
At a company I was working with,
they brought in a COO before me.
He was in over his head,
you wouldn't know that.
It wasn't until getting to know me
and some of the gross stuff I was doing,
where he came to me, he was like, Jackson.
He's like, I don't know what I'm doing.
So I've been a COO,
but I was given the reins by a 20 year COO.
He had been there for 20 years
and everything was already established.
This is a startup.
And so we moved him into the manager of the call center
where he'd also have the potential to make more money.
In addition to knowing how to do that,
because he started that department for that company
that he was COO at.
So the idea of sharing hats and defining who's doing what,
and knowing that there's so much fluidity in that,
working with somebody in HR who gets that,
who's agile enough to understand that
is not just worried about the disciplines
or the performance improvement plans,
or the liabilities, all this scary stuff is a game changer.
I've seen that in you, Mindy.
Go ahead.
Thank you.
I was just loving what you're saying
because it's such a great example of where you under,
it is fluid.
And as a company is growing,
especially in that kind of startup,
when you're series A through C,
when you even like hire someone for a job,
that job, the skills required, what's needed,
probably are going to evolve in six to nine months.
And that person may or may not have the ability to do that
or want to be able to do that or have the desire to.
So I love how you worked with someone,
you didn't just say, this is a performance problem,
you actually spent the time to really understand
what are those person's skill sets?
What are they desiring to do?
Where are the needs in the organization?
And then finding a place to put them into
where they would be able to thrive
and hopefully do well.
I think often we just do the pip
and unfortunately lose someone great.
I think the opposite is true too right now,
we're in a world of burnout
and where expectations are unclear
and people's jobs are becoming so bloated.
And then you have an individual in that job
doing the best that they can,
but it's up to a certain point
where they're no longer enjoying the tasks,
the job has gotten to be too much.
And maybe there's some stuff going on personally
and they wanna opt into a lesser job.
And I've seen companies say, no, you can't take,
well, why can't they take the lesser job?
Why not?
And so that is where I really want to challenge us
as leaders in organizations
to really think through some of our standard
operating procedures, some of these checklists
and really ask ourselves, is this still serving us?
And why are we doing this?
What are we missing out?
You're the person for me to ask.
I've contributed this reference to Bill Gates
for many, many, many years.
I don't even know if it's his, I've forgotten,
whether it was actually him or not,
but about if somebody wants to give 1%,
that's what they're willing to give,
don't make them give 100%.
Allow them to give their 1% and appreciate it.
Does that sound like a Microsoft thing or?
Yes, it does.
Okay, I hear it, it's gotten clear.
I don't remember him saying that.
Somebody said it and I love it.
I do too, because then, okay,
do we have the ability to have someone part-time
and then align the pay to that 1% or that part-time?
What would that look like?
Yeah, and it creates a healthy correlation
between the two versus depleting somebody
of their resources or their efforts or abilities
and also it's a reference point of ingratitude.
We're showing ingratitude for people
when we demand more out of them
than they feel able to give.
That's gonna break at some point.
You're gonna find a breaking point that won't be pretty.
So the other thing, visionary, is that,
and there are, there's a lot of things going on.
That's why it's so helpful to get somebody's help
like Mindy who can expand, multiply your efforts.
You get four hands.
You have two.
She's got two.
Now you got four and four, two bodies,
not four bodies, two bodies.
Go to different places at different times and do things.
And so back to the org board,
so many entrepreneurs I've worked with
are so excited when they're done with the org board.
Oh my gosh, now let's put that in a drawer.
And 96% of businesses fail within 10 years.
And 4% survive and have all sorts of struggles surviving.
Most of them are not on the list
of the top 100 places to work.
Most of them aren't even close.
Some of those are top 100 places to work
based on cultures that I don't necessarily appreciate
or like too.
So the idea of abundance and the companies
that are abundant, the ones that follow principles
of abundance, it's sad to me how few
pick up the pieces to that.
So what I would encourage you to do as a visionary
is write out your org board as you see it.
And I don't care if you make it like a tree
where the leader's at the bottom,
or if you make it to where the leader's at the top,
it's not a competition, it's just a map.
And we as human beings, I will tell you
why I don't do the tree concept.
I read from top to bottom, left to right.
That's why I don't do a tree for my org board.
Sorry to burst your bubble, all you angry people
that think that we should design them like a tree.
And so the leader, and then you wanna put,
what are the positions that are needed to be filled?
The responsibilities and duties
that have to be accomplished and put your name there
if you're the one doing it right now.
And maybe put a question mark next to that
or circle it if it's one that you don't wanna fulfill,
you want somebody else to fulfill at some point.
But without mapping that out,
and I would say at least on a quarterly basis,
every time you bring somebody new into your company too,
I know I'm eating it, I can just see that-
No, you're just, you're in my head.
You're in my head, I'm like, yeah, that's what to do.
You know, we just brought a designer on on Sunday
and she is so excited to learn new things though.
And I just been like, okay, design, go to Canva, play,
get it done, you need these 20 designs done
every single day, it's like, oh my gosh,
like what a, I've been that guy, I've done that before.
But no, it's like, okay, what do you want?
Oh, I wanna learn this, that and the other.
I'm like, this is perfect.
Oh, you got all sorts of opportunities here.
Don't worry about fitting into one box,
gravitate towards what you love, you know?
And sometimes we do have to take the trash out.
You know, as a team and help each other out
with the responsibilities we don't wanna do.
But our goal is to get you into the absolute best place
that you love.
And so now that she's in the company
and I'm seeing all the talents come out of her,
I'm like, oh cool.
And we're already evolving the process
of moving our org board.
So to show you guys what that looks like too real quick,
we have our static org board
that we teach our clients about
for what we call the power launch.
And this is oversimplified.
I'm gonna burst the bubble.
This is not the real, this is just a fit on one screen.
And you'll notice CEO, CMO, CTO, there's no CFO.
There's no COO.
There's all sorts of other levels that could exist in this.
For us, you know, we use Whimsical,
cause it's free.
That's the main reason why I like to use Whimsical.
I like to pay for things I don't use very often
or use all the necessary tools, whether whatever.
But you'll notice that I got my picture
on a lot of these different hats.
And sometimes we've had Cynthia in the COO position
and running that.
Sometimes we've had Jaime in that position.
And we're constantly moving and adjusting,
discussing as executive team,
not with new people on the team,
but with executive team members that belong,
that are part of the culture,
that are part of the structure
of what we're building long-term.
We discuss who's gonna be on the basketball court right now
for these types of programs.
What are your thoughts on that?
Where would you take us with that, Mindy?
And feel free, what would you correct
about what I'm, if I'm pushing people off a cliff,
like go ahead, like, it's beautiful.
Well, first of all,
and I'm not just trying to be a cheerleader,
like I wish more people did something like this,
because often as companies are growing,
leaders forget what it is they're actually spending time on.
And this forces them to really see.
And as you grow, you just take on more and more,
and then you forget about the word delegation.
And where, for you to move the company forward,
you need to let some of those things go.
And it's like the 80, 20% rule, right?
And so I love here, what I would add to this
is at what point is Jackson no longer servicing the company
to be its best by being in these other roles.
And that to me then ties into a workforce hiring plan.
So you're like at this target,
when Jackson's spending this much time on this thing,
then we're actually keeping him from really in it,
being in his, in the company's best interest.
And so we need to hire for someone at this time.
Or you would-
It's today by the way.
It has been.
So that's the only thing I would add on there, right?
Like is like, is there a view to be able to,
and to show the priority of,
or other people like, okay, which roles-
It's one of the ways that I love what you're saying,
cause it's huge.
And it's rocket fuel and the E-Myth.
Yeah.
Far better book by the way.
Yeah.
It was a good book.
Yeah.
I'd recommend it.
But they do a good job of explaining the realities
of handling that process and what Minnie's talking about.
I'm all about, we did that.
And we adopted that until the evolution occurred
where with us, we have our opportunity
and that is the Trabajo Para Latinos.
We have our opportunities for work for Latinos group
that's expanding and that my team are running and leading.
And this week we're launching our ambassador program.
And our ambassador program is a 90 day internship program
where they get trained on all things social media.
But we can also pick the cream of the crop out of that.
The ones who are moving in seven days and say,
Hey, we're good to go.
Like let's make this happen and move them in.
So we've got a different style
for how we go about implementing the exact same reality.
Thank you, Cynthia.
Reality because of the depth of like Cynthia,
doing all the dynamic stuff here.
Like it's so helpful.
It's awesome.
To not have to, she didn't even speak English
and she caught that.
She's able to understand that she's supported by me
and how she supports me on the system and process.
So I see you as the same type of leader Mindy.
I'm very excited for people that get to know
what you're up to.
Glad to see your vision come to fruition.
I love this.
I guess this is so powerful
because most podcasts are just talking.
And what I love is you're just kind of reinforcing
through real life example,
kind of like all the things I'm saying.
Because most people probably leave and be like,
well, what does that look like practically?
I mean, we can hear her talking about it,
but you just see an actual founder
like show how they're doing in their work.
So I'm just like, I'm just kind of
in my little happy place right now.
I am, I, but I love what you're picking up on
is because I was speaking about hiring plans
and often you're, I just wanted to dig into that
a little bit deeper.
Because people often just think about external,
but what you're actually challenging people to think of
is about internal mobility
and not just looking to external hiring,
but how are you putting in the right process,
the right mechanisms or flywheels in place
to actually upscale your talent as a succession plan
to be able to move them in different spaces
and not just think about and to challenge ourselves,
not to think it's just about a job as one person.
It's also about how can we be fluid in that?
How can we truly use agile concepts to,
okay, yeah, we may have a title,
but how do we not get locked into that?
Yeah, vision pros, revealing some real power here.
I fully intend to recruit you Mindy.
So there's these realities that people feel,
oh, it's either this or that, internal or external.
And I've always been a, I can have my cake
and I can eat it too, right?
I really always have been.
And I used to look at Richard Branson like,
man, that guy's cool.
He's got like 200 companies, that's impossible.
And I didn't even think someday.
And then one of these days, when I got divorced
and I had nothing but time to build my companies,
I was like, huh, maybe I will go that route.
Now I'm like, hey, Richard, I'm coming.
I'm like, let's do this, let's make this happen.
But it's when we put our fears aside
and when we put ourselves in an environment
with people that we trust
and people who are willing to build this up,
we've got that safety net.
And then we set our fears aside
and look at, well, how can we work together?
How can we pull these assets?
It's amazing what can happen for your visions.
So if you're inspired by anything that we said
or you're pissed off and you think we're wrong,
leave a comment, let us know.
That stuff really helps.
We really do want your feedback.
And if you've got a question for Mindy or myself,
don't hesitate to drop it in.
And if you know somebody,
maybe you're the spouse of an entrepreneur
who's listening to this like, oh, I'm so sick of,
we know, we know that's fair territory of a spouse.
Maybe tag your spouse on this episode
and give them a chance to listen.
Maybe not now that I said that, but that said,
if there's somebody that you know would benefit,
you really have no idea what type of impact
you'll make on their life.
And they probably won't tell you,
but if you're thinking of somebody,
they're likely gonna be extremely grateful for it,
especially entrepreneurs.
The Rocket Fuel, one of my least favorite concepts
of the book, and again, it's a book that I honor and love.
In the very final chapters,
they say that they highlight and glorify an entrepreneur
who says after a year of working with his integrator,
the person who has come in,
completely overhauled the business and freed them,
he said he could hardly even admit still
that the guy had been helpful,
and what it was, even though he knew that.
And so, and they say, and it's okay,
if that's how you feel about your integrator.
And I'm here to say, that's not okay, how you feel.
If you live like that, and that's like,
you're gonna eventually ruin your relationship
with the integrators,
with the people who are building with you.
But if you can switch to a mindset of compassion
and gratitude and honor for those who are helping you build,
and you can honor their passions and visions,
it's amazing how they'll come to bat
to help you build what you're up to.
So Mindy, thank you so much for joining us on this.
It's been an absolute honor to have you on the show.
Any final thought you wanna share?
It was just a joy to be here, and everything
we've talked about can feel really overwhelming,
but it's just taking that one step.
And even if it is to say, I need help,
that is the best first step you can take.
Absolutely.
Vision Pro, feel free to apply to be a guest as well,
and we'll see you on the next episode.
Take care, everybody.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pro's live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show,
and thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent night.