“When you're willing to be vulnerable and share your story, then it opens up the possibility to build a depth of relationship that you haven't experienced before.”

In this episode of Lead with Culture, Matt Lesser, founder of Uniquely Normal, explores the transformative power of coaching, leadership, and intentional culture building. Matt shares his journey of writing not one but two impactful books, the lessons learned from his leadership roles, and strategies for creating flourishing organizations. He emphasizes the importance of vulnerability, trust, and storytelling in building cohesive teams and thriving cultures.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• Why vulnerability is a cornerstone of effective leadership
• The connection between culture and team engagement
• How intentional storytelling can foster trust and camaraderie in organizations

Things to listen for:

(00:00) Intro

(00:44) The dream of writing a book 

(03:18) Lessons from leadership and personal growth

(06:45) The challenges of publishing a book

(12:33) Creating a culture where people thrive

(17:03) Practical strategies for team cohesion and storytelling

(24:41) Building intentional and high-performing cultures

Resources:

• Floyd Coaching
• The Culture Assessment
• Matthew Kelly’s Books
• Floyd Coaching’s Blog

Connect with Matt:

• Matt Lesser’s LinkedIn

Connect with the Host & Floyd Coaching:

• Kate Volman’s Linkedin
• Floyd Coaching on Linkedin
• Floyd Consulting on Facebook
• Floyd Consulting on Twitter
• Floyd Consulting on YouTube
• Floyd Consulting on Instagram

When you're willing to be vulnerable and share your story, then it opens up the possibility to build a depth of relationship that you haven't experienced before. Guess what starts to happen. You're going to have more team cohesiveness, more team camaraderie, and more of a sense that I've got your back than you did today.

This is Lead with Culture. If you have ever thought about writing a book, this is the episode for you because I was joined by my friend Matt Lesser. He is an entrepreneur. He is a culture advocate. He totally believes company culture, and he works with organizations to help them build dynamic cultures. He and I got to work together for a couple years because he actually hired me to do some coaching with him, and he was able to achieve one of his big dreams, which was to write a book. So he not only wrote one book, but two, which is amazing. So we talk a little bit about the writing process and what it took for him to actually get the first book out and then the second book out.

And we also dig into leadership and his thoughts on company culture, why it's important, why it matters, and some strategies that you can start implementing in your business today to help you and your team grow. I hope you enjoyed this episode, Matt. Thank you so much for joining us.

Today, Kate, I have been looking forward to this. I am super excited to. I'm always excited to talk with you, but in this platform, I'm really excited to chat with you.

Well, it's going to be fun. Yeah. We've been talking about doing this for such a long time, and so I'm glad we. We finally made it happen. And I know it's going to be a great conversation because the first thing that I really wanted to dig into with you was your coaching experience because you and I have known each other for I don't even know how many years now. It. Time just flies.

Little over four, I think. I think 2020. I think we met.

All right, 2020, when all the craziness was happening in the world and we got to work together and you really just knew that it was time for you to invest in a coach to help your personal professional growth. And so let's talk a little bit about how you made that decision to invest in coaching.

When you and I first met, I was at a stage in my. Both my professional and personal life where, honestly, I was just really searching for answers. I was really struggling. It was a fish out of water. And I had just come out of a lengthy stay in an organization where I honestly thought I was going to retire from. And circumstances changed. And so I left kind of suddenly and spent a year in banking. Realized I was not a banker, so that was not a great experience.

And then when you and I met, I had gone to work for a dear friend who I was actually on his board and was brought in to help him build an executive team out and go from there. But at the same time, I was really wrestling to try to find my place in the world. The company had a dream manager program. I reached out because I wanted to know more about it. And that's how you and I got connected. We had, what, a conversation or two. And then I'm like, okay, wait a second, you're a coach, too? Something like that.

I remember a conversation you and I had, and I was asking you, I was challenging you with some questions, and then I get an email from you saying, I know you do coaching. Do you happen to have any spots open? Because I really appreciated the past couple conversations that we had, and I was so happy to be able to do that with you because it was a really rewarding experience on both sides, on my side, because I got to see how much you grew. And let's dig into one of the dreams that you had, because this was something that came up in your coaching sessions that we got to work on together.

So I was feeling for probably a couple of years leading up to when you and I first started meeting in a coaching relationship to write a book, but I was really on the fence with that. I wasn't sure because I knew it would be freaking hard to write it, and I knew it'd be even freaking harder to get up published. And so I wasn't sure that I wanted to do it at the same time I wanted to do it. So I had this internal struggle of I want to do it, but I don't want to do it. And so for probably what, six or eight months, you would ask me, okay, where are you? Have you started? Have you started? And I always give you some bull crap excuse why I hadn't started until finally. I think it was about probably our sixth or seventh month in. You talked to me about the vomit draft, which was such a lovely word picture that I still haven't forgotten, obviously. And so you said, hey, before next month, just write words.

And you're like, it doesn't matter if it makes sense, doesn't make. Or if it does make sense, doesn't make sense, does not matter. Just write words. I guess for the first time, I felt free to write and not necessarily Know where I was going with it and what that did for me anyway, Kate, is it started the process because I actually did follow through on your instruction. And I think I came to the next meeting with what, three or four or five pages handwritten. And then by the next time we met, it was like 20 pages handwritten. And then we were off to the races. And so for the First, I think 80 or 85 pages of the first book, I hand wrote it and it finally switched over to typing it because I knew eventually it had to be.

Typed out anyway, which I thought was so wild. I was like, wow, you're handwriting it. Good for you. Talking about really going all in on the vomit draft. Because if you're right, if you're typing it, it's so much easier to delete. Go back to edit yourself as you're writing, but you're like, nah, I'm just going to write. And I think it's an interesting choice, but it's a great one to give other people that not permission. Not that anyone needs permission, but this idea of, oh, your process looks different than someone else's process.

Because a lot of people that are listening probably have a dream of writing a book. So many people talk about writing a book. They want to write a book. They have a book inside of them. They have this idea they want to share. But most people don't actually do it. Or most people do what you do, which is you talk about it, you say you want to do it, you have ideas, you maybe jot them down. And to actually start the process, that's the hardest part.

And you saw that in your writing. And so talk a little bit about your writing process. You started doing it, handwriting, then you switched to the computer. Like, what was the whole process? What was your big idea? And how did you put together a process to really help you sit down and actually do the work?

I wish I could tell you that I sat down ahead of time and put together a beautiful outline and I had this real good strategy that I then executed on. And the book just developed iteratively in this beautiful process. It wasn't like that at all. So I started with my vomit draft that then continued to be more vomit drafts upon vomit drafts. Eventually it started to take shape. So I had a big idea. And the big idea was I wanted to write a book to leaders deeper purpose and meaning in life. And it came out of two things.

It came out of my experience both running our family business many years prior and then working when I was in private equity and traveling all the world, meeting business owners primarily, and then hearing this re this story over and over and over and over again. What I would ask them a question of, why are you interested in selling your business? And they would tell me, oftentimes with emotion, that they spent their entire lives sacrificing to build this thing right. That they thought would give them purpose, meaning income, assets, freedom, flexibility, to be able to do the things that they wanted to do. What happened was along the way, when they said they sacrificed what they sacrificed what was truly meaningful to them. And that was usually their marriages and their kids. And so by the time I sat in front of them, they were broken people. And they were literally saying, I don't even want this thing anymore. That's why I'm selling it.

Because I lost what was truly purposeful and meaningful to me. And so, Kate, I didn't hear that story three or four or five times. I heard it a hundred times. And it was colliding with my own story, because at the time, I was traveling a lot, I was gone a lot. I was missing a lot of my kids. And so I felt this strong urge to both share my story, but also share my experiences. And so I tried to put that all together in the first book, and it was just too much. And so by the time I got the draft, what I thought was my first draft completed, so the book is in three parts.

I knew I wanted three parts. I wanted a story, I wanted a practical concept. So I came up with this thing called the Flourishing Life Model. And so I wanted to present that model in this first book. And then I wanted the third part of the book to be all application. So application integration. Application integration. I didn't want to just write a theory book.

I wanted to write a practical application book. Oh, the theory. And so by the time I got what I thought was my first draft done, hired an editor I got into with a publisher, which you referred me to. Then they introduced me to an editor. My editor was amazing. In fact, she was my editor for my second book as well, even though I was with a different publisher. And she came back after the first draft, and literally, I'm a good student because I love to learn. That first draft had so much red in it and had a hundred.

I think it had 157 items that required some kind of action from me, including her telling me. She a little asked me, she was like, what were you trying to accomplish in the third part of your book? I said, integration and application. She was like, that's what I thought. You failed if they redo the whole third part. But she did. She coached me on writing the book. And literally, the thing that she kept saying to me is, you have to understand, like, the reader does not care about you. They care about how what you're telling them is going to add value to their lives.

And so if you can't answer the question, why is this story in here? Why is this part of your story in here? If it's not adding value to their lives, we're cutting it. And so what happened to that, then, is that the first book took a completely different direction, and it really became more of a personal story of my personal story, sharing a lot of life lessons that I had learned both in business and in life. I introduced the flourishing life model and an application integration. But I really had a heart for writing a book to leaders and to organizational leaders about creating a flourishing organization in their cultures. And so that led immediately to the second book.

Okay, so there's a couple things that I want to pull out from this. The first one is whether you want to write a book or not. Writing is so powerful for any leader because it helps you really flesh out your ideas so that you can then use those, bring back to your team, and better communicate what it is that you're looking to do. So the fact that you had an editor, that was like, what was the goal? You failed. Editors are the best, right? Because this is literally what they are there for. But it's also very painful when you get feedback like that. It is for me, it was interesting, too, because I would get feedback, and sometimes I was very resistant to it or it was painful. You get that little.

Wait a second. I like that part. Or I thought it was good. And you really have to. You have to step away. You have to give yourself a good 24 hours at least to just let it sit and then come back to it. And almost every time I came back to it and I thought, okay, I get it. I see the points.

Like, I see where she's coming from. But it's. You know, a lot of writers will say, you have to learn how to kill your darlings. And that was something that you have to really learn how to do, right? And so that can be in anything. It can be an idea, a project, something that you're working on in your business. When you think, oh, this strategy is going to be the thing that gets us from A to B or. And it doesn't work out that way, you have to learn that that's okay. And, you know, it's a little bit, you know, just a little hit to the ego, but we can take it.

Yeah, it was one of the more humbling experiences of my life. But the thing is this, though, Kate, is that after she reviewed my first draft, before she did any work, she called me and she's like, tell me what you're trying to do with this book. What's your overarching purpose for writing this? What's your why? And I said, ultimately, my. My why is influence and impact. I want to have an influence and impact in people's lives. And she said, okay. I kind of picked up on that. And so she said, if that's what you truly want to do, she said, I will help you.

It's going to be a very tedious. It's going to be painful, and it's going to be a lot of hard work because she said, she's like, you have the bare bones. You have really good foundational content to work with. But she said, it's very obvious you've never written a book before. I'm like, yeah, no kidding. And so when I got back the first. When I got back her comments for the first time, literally, I was so overwhelmed. I didn't do anything with it for a month.

I just let it sit because I honestly didn't know where to go from there. Literally, my. I kept thinking, yep, this is over. This is not going to happen. I can't do it. It was because of my publishing manager then, who reached out to me and she's like, okay, where are you in the rewrite? It was literally a rewrite. And I said, yeah, I haven't touched it. And so she was like, well, what's it going to take? I said, I don't have a freaking clue.

And she was like, how about we start with page one and then call me? So I did. And then she's like, okay, great. Now do page two. Call me. So we did that for probably the first 10 pages, and finally, okay, Mikey, I got it. And then we were off to the races. But it took me probably another six months to rewrite it.

Yeah, and that's. That's the process. That's part of the process. And what I love about this conversation around, I mean, look, we're talking about writing a book, but whether you are writing a book or building a business or leading a team or anything, these are all the things that we are challenged by. We've all been in that situation where we have put a lot of time, energy, and effort into a project, and it didn't turn out the way we thought it would. We didn't get the results we thought we would. And, man, it can feel daunting to have to start over, to start back on page one. But that's where that coaching comes into play.

Because, Matt, you could have just left it and thought, okay, I wrote this quote unquote book. It's not going to be published because it's not publishable yet. It's just in the drawer. Like, I sometimes wonder how many books or ideas are just hidden in the drawer because it's just too hard to keep going. And so you have to have that person that's going to tell you the hard truths, but also be your cheerleader along the way and push you and remind you that it is possible that you have everything that it takes in order to get it done. So you went through that process one step at a time. That's another thing. I love that lesson of just baby steps.

Because when you have that big project, you have that when you're building a business, it can feel daunting. You have these big, big goals. You have these where you want to go and where you see yourself. And it doesn't usually look the way we think it's going to as we're building and growing, and we have to be okay with that. And so you got back into it, you developed this whole framework, you published this, this beautiful book, and tell everybody what the title is. You have two titles that are just like, go hand in hand.

Yep. So the first one is called Unsatisfied When Less is More. And then the follow up is called Unengaged Building Flourishing Organizations. And books three and four will also have some kind of an untitled to them. I don't know what they'll be yet, but I have a few ideas.

I love it. So this is what was so cool, too. So you wrote the first book, and then Matt's like, okay, he gets the first book out, and then I don't even know how long it was. It wasn't long after you get the first one out and you're like, oh, yeah, I'm writing my second one and you publish it so quickly. I was like, whoa, that's crazy. So before we dig into that process, another thought was how unless you did the first one, went through all that hard work, learned what it took to actually write the first book, you would never have been able to do the second one so quickly. And the idea from this for the second book came out of writing the first one.

It did. In fact, Many times when I was writing the first book, primarily the rewrite, when we now were taking out a lot of the stuff that I wanted in there, especially when I was talking to leaders about leadership and organizational culture, we basically just threw all that out because it didn't flow in the first book. And so, literally, I can't tell. Many times I'm just contemplating and saying, this isn't the book that I set out to write. This isn't what I wanted to do. And it wasn't until literally, we were finishing up the first book and it hadn't gone to print yet, but we were getting very close, and the idea for the second book became crystal clear. And I. I don't even remember what the epiphany moment was or whatever, if there's a blinding light or something.

I remember, anyway, might have been a dream after I had, you know, pizza with anchovies or something. I don't know. Anyway, so it was. So the second idea for the book. The idea for the second book came, and so I literally started writing before the first book was released. And the second book, it took me about 93 days to write it.

Wow.

I had a lot of time in my hands. It was before my business had really started to take off. And so I didn't have a whole lot of client work. And so I literally had about 93 days of almost uninterrupted time to write. And I didn't write every day. I caveat that by saying, you know, had I had a full client list like I do today, it would have probably taken a year. I was a part of my life where I had the time, I knew what I wanted to do. I had just come off all this rewriting, all this coaching, because I told Nicole, my editor, when she started doing that, I said, nicole, I don't want you to do the work for me.

I said, I want you to coach me. And because I really do want to learn to become a decent writer, I never. May never be the next Patrick Lenon or whatever, and that's fine. But I do want to learn how to be a more effective writer. And so I said, I don't want you to work for me, coach me and how to do it. And she did. And she coached me every step of the way. And so the interesting thing is that when I finished the second book and sent her the draft, when I got it back, I was as shocked by the second time as I was for the first, for the opposite reason.

The second one literally had, I think, eight or 10 comments that needed changed. And so I called her and I said, I am really confused here. I said, the first book you had me, I had, like, 157 to do. So I said, I have eight in this one. So what's going on? And she literally said. She's like, you listened. She was like, you learned. And she's like, it's all through the second book.

She's like, it's more cohesive. You have a message that carries through. She's like, it just. It works. And she's like, the first book was a mess.

Oh, thanks. Oh, my God. You know, it's so. It's so interesting. I talked to a lot of authors, and I can't tell you how many authors that I've met who said, I wish I could take my first book off the market. It's, like, embarrassing that it's even out in the world, because as you grow and develop in your skill, in whatever your craft is, you get better and you see things differently. But I love that that was what you shared with your editor, because so many people would rather just have it done for them. They don't really necessarily want, especially business writing.

I know a lot of people are encouraged to write a book because it helps their business, not necessarily because they really have a message that they want to share and they want the book to be really impactful. Their outlook on it is different. Obviously, they want it to be impactful, but it's also, just get out a book because it shows your credibility, and instead of getting out the book that you really intend to get out, to really change people's lives.

Yeah. There's a reason why ghost writing is such a big business, because of what you just said. And I didn't ever have a desire to even hire a ghostwriter. I wanted to learn. I really did. And I knew that meant that it may not be as refined or as, you know, whatever, if a more experienced writer had done it for me. But that's not the purpose. I wrote the books.

I wrote the books to get my thoughts out to the world.

All right, so let's talk a little bit about. You've been in leadership roles for most of your career. You've had businesses. You've been part of businesses, been part of teams and building teams, and you have a real passion for company culture, and that's what your books are really so much about. So talk a little bit about why culture matters to you so much and what you're seeing in the workforce today, because you work with a lot of different Organizations.

Literally out of college, I came into our family business and a year into it, I tried to resign, actually. And rather than me leaving, my dad left. And so here I was, I think 24 year old kid, literally a kid taking over the family business. And ever since then I have been in some kind of senior leadership or executive role, both obviously in our company, but also in other companies that I've worked with. And so I knew that as a 23 year old, I was not equipped to be a leader. And so I enlisted. I just started reaching out to other men and women that I admired that were in leadership roles. And I literally would say, hey, can I buy you lunch? Can I buy you coffee? And I just wanted to learn from them.

And so I'd ask them a few questions. And so that was basically my leadership development. I'd always ask them, tell me about a great example of leadership. What have you learned from your greatest failure in leadership? And then what book should I read? And so I did that for 25 years. And so I became more and more passionate about healthy, effective leadership. As our family business grew, I was hiring people considerably older than me, more experienced than me, many times smarter than me. And you lead people like that very differently than you lead peers or people younger than you. I had a crash course in leadership by basically being thrown into it.

They didn't teach you that in business school. And so over time, what I saw in working in my own company and in other companies and then eventually working with other organizations was there was a distinct difference between organizations that had a healthy culture and those that had what I would call a more toxic or unhealthy or toxic culture. Healthy cultures, you see people that were enjoying their work, they didn't have the Sunday night panic attacks where they knew they had to go to work on Monday morning. They didn't dread their job. They enjoyed the people they worked with. They were given opportunities to thrive, develop, and even flourish. And then I saw organizations where there was these undercurrents of gossiping, backbiting, complaining. People hated their job, people didn't want to go to work there.

Turnover was through the roof. People weren't engaged. And it's like, okay, so there's a distinct difference and there's obviously everything in between. So how can we be intentional? The ones that were healthy and high performing, they were intentionally developed. That doesn't happen by accident. And so the leadership teams would develop these cultures on purpose and with intentionality. And so that was what I wanted to focus on, is how can I. We Whatever influence organizations and leaders to be intentional about building organizations that have a culture where people can thrive and eventually flourish.

And what I mean by Flourish vs Thrive, Thrive is your high performing individuals, they don't need much motivation, they knock it out of the park. But it really is more of a high performing individual and teams, but it's really a focus on accomplishing more and more and more. Flourishing is the opportunity to accomplish but also develop. Develop into the best version of you. Develop making sure you're in the right seat in the bus. Making sure that you have opportunities to maximize your potential and give back to others as well. So that has been my focus now on my own for the last three and a half years and working with organizations to do that. When I was writing the second book, I was looking for statistics.

I didn't want to just write again another theory book, right? I wanted actual hard statistics. So I came across these studies that were done within the last, actually within the last five to 10 years. So it's more recent. And one I came across is on engagement and productivity. And so part of the reason my book is called Unengaged is because people who are unengaged in the workforce usually are involved in jobs where they don't feel seen, heard, appreciated, valued or loved. And so it's more of a toxic culture, unhealthy culture. And those types of cultures experience up to a 40% discount in productivity. So you're paying people for 100%, you're getting maybe 60.

On the flip side, cultures that are healthy, where people feel listened to, understood, seen, valued, heard and loved, they experience up to a 20% premium. So now you're paying for 100 and you're getting 120% productivity. So just from a bottom line perspective, when you're trying to sell services about, you know, hey, I'm going to help your culture, I'm going to help your leadership team and be more intentional. Leaders look at you like, oh great, you're selling snake oil. And so it's like, no, there's actual studies, there's actual stats. This actually can help your bottom line. But you have to have those numbers right. And then when it comes to turnover, like turnover costs companies between 25 and 400% of the annual salary of the position turned over.

Toxic Organizations experience between 3 and 10 times the turnover rate that healthy, high performing, flourishing cultures experience.

Can you share an example? I want to hear from, from you about whether it's a client that you worked with or you with your teams, that somebody listening could go back and try with their teams some kind of challenge, leadership challenge that you were going through. Whether it would be a person, a leadership team that was dealing with something. What is something that you felt like? I really made an impact on this challenge that we were going through in the business.

I'll give a couple. One of my favorite thing exercises to do with leadership teams in particular is to really help them. I'm a firm believer that culture starts with the leaders and then goes downward. It can come bottom up. It's a lot more difficult because if the leaders aren't bought into this, then it's very difficult to get that proliferated through the organization. So if a leadership team is willing to engage in this, one of the first things that I have them do as a team, two things. One, I literally have them sit around a table and share their stories. I don't mean the CliffsNotes version, I mean they're full on stories.

I did this with a client, first time that I had met them actually. So I came in, I thought it was just kind of a get to know you session. Instead, they wanted to jump right in. Literally. The CEO of the company walks in and he says, okay, Matt, take it away. And I'm like, take what away? He's like, whatever you want to do. I said, how much time do we have? He said, we've got four hours. So perfect.

There's probably eight, nine people in the room. I said, here's what we're going to do. So we're going to go in the room and people are going to share their stories. And I mean the full on story. At the end of that time, the CEO pulled me aside and he said, I have worked with these men and women for years. So he said, they said, that guy right there. He pointed this guy, that guy right there. I've worked with him for almost 20 years.

He says, I've never heard that part. He's like, I didn't know that stuff about him. And he's like, he's never shared any of that. He said, how did you do that? And I said, oh, I went first, by the way, I shared my story first. And I said, I won't share his name. But I just said, Mr. CEO, I said, when you're willing to be vulnerable and share your story, then it opens up the possibility to build a depth of relationship that you haven't experienced before. And I said, guess what starts to happen.

I said, I guarantee you tomorrow you're going to have more team cohesiveness, more team camaraderie. And more of a sense that I've got your back than you did today because this whole team was willing to be a little more vulnerable with each other than they were the day before.

Do you ever experience people who don't want to share?

So I have experienced where people have shared at a very high level and they haven't really gotten below the surface. And by the time everybody else has shared, they almost always say, hey, can I share more? Because I didn't realize we were going that deep. Many times I will go first as kind of a, okay, let me show you what I mean by share your story. And I go full on in and I share some of the darkest and most difficult, most painful parts of my story. And that often opens the door then for others to share, if I'm permitted. This is how I love to start when I work with teams. Because now we have the expectation that we're going to be authentic and we're going to be transparent with each other. And now we can really begin to work with each other.

Now we can be the layer in coaching we can layer in. And then I encourage those leaders to say, okay, fine, what you just experienced, go do that with your teams. And then those leaders have them do that with their teams and trickle it right down the organization. And what that begins to do is send the message through the organization that, wow, this company cares about me personally. And you begin to see some amazing things happen.

My other question, because I can feel somebody listening, asking this, do you give a time frame? Do you? No. Everyone. Because, you know, Matt, there are people on teams, there will people in general, some that don't want to share a lot and some that want to share forever.

My preference is to not give a time frame. However, if I know we have a set time, let's say we have three hours. And so the couple of teams that I've actually been on in organizations that I've had a couple of larger teams I had to work with and I knew we didn't have a whole day to sit down and tell our stories. So what I would do is I would chop it up and say, okay, today we're going to do three people. You each get 20 minutes. And then I would stick to the 20 minutes. And then if we got 20 minutes and they weren't done or they wanted more time, then I would try to figure out, okay, fine, in a future meeting we'll let you continue, but for now, you're done.

Got it. Okay. I just like for people to have a little context around it. Because there might be some people that want to try that activity. Right? It is interesting, especially for small businesses, but if you work with a bigger organization, they usually have teams within the teams. And so to be able to really get to know people, it really humanizes. It humanizes us because there's so much dehumanization going on today, especially with people behind their screens and social media and people saying things to people that they never would say to their face. It's.

But it's easier to stay online. And so to be able to build that into the workforce when we really know our people. Look, we do similar work, right? We're asking people to share their dreams. And not everybody wants to share their dreams right away. But to your point, once some people start doing it, then we often see more people are like, oh, okay, I'm going to share some of my dreams too. And then you start to see that camaraderie and that trust build and which is really nice.

Example I just gave you, Kate, by the way, that was about a $250 million company annual revenue. So that wasn't. It wasn't small. It wasn't huge, but it wasn't small either. So just to just give you some.

Context around that, I mean, so many of the organizations we work with, they're similar sizes. They have 3, 4, 5, up to like 20,000 plus people in the organization. You're not going to have do that with 20,000 people, but you're going to do it within the groups of the departments and everything?

Absolutely.

So what is one tip that you want to share to a leader? Listening to help them become a better leader over the next six to 12 months?

I only get one.

How about this? You can give three. We'll let you three.

Okay. First, be real. So many leaders, for whatever reason, they're often reluctant to be vulnerable, to let people in to see that they're human. And my experience, when leaders are willing to be vulnerable and out themselves and be real with people, they respect the trust and the camaraderie around the leadership team goes through the roof. So I would say first is be real. Second, choose to trust right here on a regular basis. Leaders, especially Senior leaders, especially CEOs, presidents of companies, say that they don't know who they can talk to because they're not sure who they can trust. If that's the case, then find a coach, put together an advisory board.

The best advice I think I got when I started this new venture is a dear friend and mentor of mine. He's 48. He has dyslexia, though, so he's actually 84. His joke, not mine. But he literally told me when I found out I was doing this, he called me up and he said, matthew, let's have a beer. I said, why? And he's like, because I want to talk to you about the starting of business nonsense. And this guy's a serial entrepreneur his entire career. He was joking, obviously.

But he told me there, he told me that meeting. I said, what's up? And he's like, I want you to put together an advisory board. And I said, okay, how am I going to do that? I said, I'm bootstrapping this thing. I can't afford to pay people. He's like, no, you asked four or five people to give you a half day of their time every quarter. He's like, you're not compensating them. But he said, the rule is, he's like, nothing's off limits. It was like, nothing.

Like personal, professional, family, whatever it is, nothing's off. Finances, nothing's off limits. Hey, that has been the best advice that I think I've ever been given in business. I can't tell you how many times over the last three and a half years that I've tried to quit and they won't let me. So second, choose to trust. If you don't have anybody, hire a coach, put together an advisory board, whatever. The third is be intentional culture in organizations. As you know, Kate, culture happens.

So it isn't matter of, do I have a culture? It's a matter of what kind of culture do I have and what kind of culture do I want? What's the gap? The only way to address that gap is to intentionally address it. I don't remember where I heard this, but I've adopted it as my own. Whatever is allowed is blessed. And so if we allow bad behaviors, bad attitudes, bad whatever it is, we allow gossip and complaining and we allow the things that make a culture toxic. If we allow that and we permit it, we're blessing it. Root it out, address it. Some of the kindest things that we can do is be clear with people, with our expectations, with whatever it is we expect of them and expect them to do and behave and all those things. And when they don't meet those expectations, allow them to succeed someplace else.

Because that sends the message that, hey, I'm serious about this. We're going to build something and build something special. But it takes a super. It's really hard work. You have to be perseverant, and it Usually takes more time, money, and effort than you ever imagine it will. But the payoff and the return on that, oh, my. Through the roof.

It's awesome that you love it so much. I mean, look, you're doing what you're meant to do, and that's a beautiful thing. So if somebody is thinking about hiring a business coach to help them with their personal, professional dreams, what advice would you give to them?

Hire Kate Volman, Shameless plug over there. No, it's. Find somebody that you can trust and somebody that is willing to be honest and real with you. Yeah, it might have been a hopeless plug, but, Kate, two things I really appreciate about you. Number one, you were not afraid to poke me in the chest. And sometimes what leaders do not have is that they don't have people that are willing to get in their face and hold up a mirror and say, hey, do you realize this? And the second thing is it's okay to ask hard questions. And you asked me difficult questions and you didn't let me just slough it off. You required me to answer.

Now, I didn't have to answer them. I could have said, no, I'm not doing it. But I was paying you to ask me those hard questions. And so I'm like, well, if I want the full experience, then I'm going to do the work that she wants me to do. And doggone, sometimes I'm like, oh, what is she doing? What is she up to today? She's crazy. Whatever. But at the it all worked out. You had a method to your madness.

And every coach I've ever seen, if they're worth their weight, they have a method to their madness and they're good.

So anyway, well, it was such a pleasure working with you, Matt, because you really do put in the work and that's such a big part of it. Right? When you hire somebody, you are paying someone to help you do the things that you keep saying you're going to do and you don't do them right. Like, we know what we need to do. We know the steps we need to take, but it's too easy to let ourselves off the hook when you hire a coach. I can't tell you how many people come to a session and they will say, I just finished this yesterday because I did not want to come to my session telling you I didn't accomplish what I said I was going to accomplish. And that was. They will admit that is literally the only reason I did it.

Wow.

But you know what? If that's what it takes to push them into doing it, because oftentimes what happens is they start doing it because they are being held accountable finally, to someone. And then once you start, you know this, once you start, you get into it, that inspiration that you thought was going to strike is there now because you actually started doing the work. And so that's what I love about it. It's that accountability piece. It's that tough love. Right. In fact, we do trainings all the time, and there's a session where we ask people to share the qualities they love most about a leader. And something that shows up consistently is tough but fair.

Tough but fair. And I love when people can come to the table and we want to be challenged, like I believe people want to be challenged because it's the only thing that helps us grow. It's just that most people don't have someone truly challenging them. And oftentimes we won't do it for ourselves because we let ourselves off the hook and we want things to be easy.

Yeah. And that's the thing, I think that a coach or an advisory board or whatever brings the table is a level of accountability. And I think that's where a lot of leaders, especially your CEOs, your presidents, your more senior leaders, sometimes they lack accountability. And so they're right. They let themselves off the hook way too much. But when you have a person or a group of people that are holding your feet to the fire, you start to get results, and you start to see some significant changes in both you, but also the organization.

Yeah. All right, Matt, thank you so much for joining me today. This was so great.

Thank you. This is great. Thanks, Kate.

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And more importantly, I hope you got at least one idea to help you in your leadership journey. I love Matt's tips. I also think that it would be interesting to try that exercise that he shared and get your team and have them share their stories. I'm curious if any of you have tried that. What's worked, or what did you see? What did that experience bring to your organization? What did you see happen after you made some space for people to share, share their background, where they're coming from, and help connect people in a different way. So if you want to share with us, we would love to hear.

And this interview might have inspired you to hire a coach. Coaching is such an incredible way to become the best version of yourself. Why? Because of what Matt and I talked about. Coaches hold you accountable. They encouraged, encourage you. They're there to push you and challenge you to ask you great questions. Having a great coach changes your life. It helps you grow personally and professionally.

And that is what we do at Floyd. We're here to help you. We want to see you succeed. We want you to grow in all the areas you want to grow, and especially those dreams you have in your heart, those dreams that you've been thinking about for such a long time. Just like Matt, he didn't share this in the episode, but when he originally told me that he had this dream of writing a book, this dream was not new. It was something that he had thought about for five plus years. And we all have those dreams in our heart that we've been talking about for far too long, and we don't do anything about them. And having a coach to really push us to achieve that, oh, my gosh, it's amazing.

But it took them investing in themselves, hiring a coach, and finally making that happen. And so if you're interested in discovering what that might look like for you, then please go to floydcoaching.com, fill out that form, and someone on our team will reach out to you to have that conversation. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, Lead with Culture.