What kind of work environment are you inviting people into? Is it one of trust and respect? Is it one where people feel psychologically safe?
Our guest today is Esther Weinberg, and she is an expert on creating successful and sustainable portable cultures and is the author of her new book, “Better Leaders. Better People. Better Results.” During our interview she shares some great tips and suggestions about creating a culture, but also measuring your culture to help keep it in line with your company values. She even talks about the “smell of your business” as way to help understand.
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
ABOUT OUR GUEST:
As Founder & Chief Leadership Development Officer of The Ready Zone, Esther Weinberg is a masterful business growth accelerator that’s earned a reputation in high-growth media and technology industries for game-changing breakthroughs with executives, leaders and teams. From how to increase profitability in changing markets, to creating successful and sustainable “portable” virtual cultures, to moving employees from burnout and exhaustion to empowered, innovative and driven, Esther rolls-up-her-sleeves with audiences on the who/what/why of how to grow and sustain a present virtual and global workforce. Esther provides proven, transformative, yet practical tools and systems that help benchmark and measure results.
ABOUT BIG SKY FRANCHISE TEAM:
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TRANSCRIPTION:
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:00):
Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team, and as we open today, I’m wondering what kind of work environment you are inviting people into. Is it one of trust and respect? And our guest today is Esther Weinberg, and she’s an expert on creating successful and sustainable portable cultures and is the author of her new book, Better Leaders. Better People. Better Results. During our interview, she shares some great tips and suggestions about creating a culture, but also measuring your culture to help keep it in line with your company values. She even talks about the “smell of your business”, as a way to help get a sense or understanding of what’s actually going on. So let’s go ahead and jump into my interview with Esther Weinberg.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (00:57):
Esther Weinberg. I am the Founder and Chief Leadership Development Officer of The Ready Zone.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (01:03):
Great. And you have a great background and you have a new book out, so tell us about the new book and what you’re doing there?
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (01:11):
It’s interesting because, especially in these times, what we found is that leaders want to feel ready to powerfully capture all the opportunities and challenges at their feet. And it’s a tough thing to do. Especially if you think about before the last two years start of a pandemic, life was rough enough as it is because of economy, technology, generational differences, political issues, and so we believe that how you actually be ready and powerful, take on all these opportunities and challenges at your feet, is by creating workplace cultures where trust, respect, and psychological safety are not just valued, because probably no one would argue with that, but they are as measured as the bottom line and we’ve developed these six KPIs, key performance indicators, or what we call, affectionately, zone performance indicators.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (02:04):
That’s a diagnostic because I find that I always get questioned about, “Okay, that sounds great, but how? How do I do that?” Not necessarily why? More of how. How do I do that? How do I implement that? How do I make my teams more effective? How do I create retention when I’m bleeding people. There’s a lot of how, and so what we do is, in the book, is we explain the rationale and the why the zone performance indicators are so important, and also how to actually apply them, what they are, and how to actually use it and apply it.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (02:41):
Really neat. I love this, and by the way, Esther’s book is available for free, download at thereadyzone.com, and I’ll link that in the show notes so that you can check that out and get access to it. And really, the topic in your book and the subjects you’re just describing of creating this type of culture and community, to me, is critical for one of the reasons I really wanted to have you on the show was to talk about this idea of the portable work environment and what that means and what’s involved with it. And to me, all of this coincides. It all blends together from what I’ve gathered so I’d love for you to share what is a portable work environment.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (03:21):
It’s interesting. I remember the great author, Stephen Covey has this great quote. I don’t know if you’re a Stephen Covey lover, but he’s got this great quote, it says, I hope I don’t butcher it, but he said that trust is the glue of life. I think he said it’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication and it’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships. And if you think about it data wise, that if employees trust their employer’s commitments, their engagement level can increase up to 20% and the likelihood that they will leave their organization actually goes down by 87%. If you think about it, you know, everyone’s talking about this great resignation that happened. I mean, it’s not lost on people that there has been a lot of leaving and I think the data showed that in September of 2021, almost four and a half million Americans left their jobs.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (04:13):
It was the highest rate since 2000. The biggest thing is when we talk about a portable culture, what actually creates a great culture. Before the days when we all went into lockdown and pandemic days, one would say it’s the environments that have all the services, right? They’ve got the ping pong tables, the bowling alleys in the office, and they have free coffee and donuts, and dry cleaning, and free parking and all that and more. What we found, if you look at it, when we all went into lockdown, that all of a sudden everyone took whatever culture they had, but they didn’t know that they did that, and they basically said, everybody go home, start working, I pray that everyone will start working and then people were nice to each other for like four months, and then it was like, all right, we got to get to work.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (05:13):
What we know, especially today, when many people have gone back to a physical office space or employers have actually employed this hybrid work mode, is what we forgot is that culture is more than the four walls of an office. And if you’re actually going to create a sustainability of what your workplace looks like, it has to be thought about beyond the physicality of the environment. And so that’s what we mean by a portable culture. It’s like, think about your laptop. Your iPad is portable. Not that I’m a spokesperson for Apple, but it’s a portable thing. I could take my phone anywhere. How do I do that with culture so people have a similar experience? For example, like when I was talking to you before, if you’re going to create workplace cultures of trust, respect, and psychological safety, how do I actually do that practically and pragmatically that I don’t need to be in an office to experience that? And so there’s lots of ways to do it, but that’s what I mean when I talk about portability of culture.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (06:13):
Okay. Interesting. Well, and certainly this portability, whether we want it to be portable or not, for most companies experience this portability happening and in your experience of what you’ve helped companies with, how do you create this culture that you’re trying to create within four walls and now you’re doing virtual work or remote work or creating this, but what kind of steps or things can an organization look to do, or a leader that’s tuning in maybe a nugget or two they might be able to take away?
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (06:46):
I think it’s a great question. There’s several different things, but let’s break it down. First of all, if the data shows too, if 77% of people trust their employer more than the government, media, or NGOs, and so if you have that, how do you actually build it? I’ll give you an example of how to erode it and then how to build it. I had a client of mine who said, “On Fridays after five o’clock, we’re not meeting anymore.” Lasted maybe 60 to 90 days. And then all of a sudden meetings started popping on our calendar at five o’clock, at six o’clock, at seven o’clock, on a Friday. It didn’t mean anything. The simplest thing you can do is also be your word.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (07:35):
If you give your word to something, you have to actually make sure that it actually works, because remote work is challenging for interpersonal communications, right? It’s tougher to read people across these kinds of lines. And so if we talk about when I say something, actually do it. You have to actually be able to live the values that you’re espousing to people. The other thing to do is I find that teams migrated together really quickly, which makes sense, right? People were working together from all different parts of the world and the globe, but they never actually knew why they were working together other than you have this project, you have to fill it, you have to do it, and be done with it. First of all, you have to remember that if I’m on a team with someone, but I actually don’t believe that they have the same competence level that I do, trust is eroded immediately.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (08:27):
We are talking about a team environment, reputation of individuals make up a team itself. So if I don’t believe that we have a reputation together individually and collectively that we can even do the work, it will erode things. So as a leader, what you can do is you can come together and either create what we call a vision narrative, which is what is our North Star of what are we actually doing together. The second thing you do, which is, you know, lots of people create a vision, but what I say to people is how are you calibrating your work against that vision narrative? Because oftentimes they’ll have the vision narrative as a sentence and like, well that sentence doesn’t actually say much so it needs to be a little bit more articulated. A paragraph or two that gives people a sense of actually where they’re going. Then what they can do is be in conversation about how you’re calibrating your work towards that.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (09:19):
Then the second piece that you do is part of that. You create what I call a team commitment. That’s our North Star. Why are we together, the four, the eight, the 12 of us, and what are we committed to actually getting that thing done? And then how are we holding ourselves accountable to that commitment? And then all the non-sexy stuff, all the practicality stuff, which I call an impact guide about what are all the ways in which we’re going to work together in order to achieve it and how do we hold each other accountable? Because that creates integrity for the group. Also within that you can create a sense of benevolence, meaning what’s the emotional care that we’re going to have for each other. And also the level of transparency that we’re not going to be left in the dark.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (10:01):
All these kinds of ways in which you’re working sets the team up, then in order to go like a bottle rocket, now you’re off and running. What I like about this formula is if something goes wrong, which it will, someone missteps, someone doesn’t communicate, a mistake is made, then it’s not an attack against you, it’s about what did we agree to that either we stepped over or we’re not in alignment anymore and how do we recalibrate against that and then talk about it through that lens.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (10:37):
I really like how you describe that. So it helps remove some of those feeling like it may be a personal attack from a coworker, whether it’s coworkers or an employee to a manager or for a small business, in this case it very often is probably going to be the owner with their staff or their team so it helps eliminate that. And instead of it feeling personal or attacked in one way, shape, or form, it sounds like now this can be productive and create productive discussion to address a problem that’s been identified and how do we remedy that?
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (11:17):
That’s right. A lot of times, at The Ready Zone, we talk about these zone performance indicators. You have to remember what we’re talking about. We’re talking about three levels. The individual level, the leader and the responsibility I take as that leader, business owner, to your point. Team, how do I actually bring teams alongside with me and how do I serve the organization? And so what we’re talking about here, you still need to take responsibility for you and your part, while at the same time shepherding your team through all the different machinations of the team’s growth, and shifts, and changes that are happening in the business.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (11:56):
One of the things that popped into my mind as I’m listening to you talk about this, I work with companies to help them franchise their business. I work with franchise organizations and people who listen in very well may be leaders at multi site businesses. So how does this work when you’re at maybe one mega complex for a home office, now, all of a sudden you have all these satellites, whether they’re franchises or satellite locations that you’ve got this whole mix going on. How does something like this apply to that kind of a scenario?
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (12:29):
Well, I think we have to take a step back and say a few things. One is when you’re working in satellite offices, I was talking to a company the other day that has acquired companies all around the globe. So they went from a North America, Latin America based company to now a multinational on every continent except for Antarctica. And so satellite office coming soon. The first question is do you want to actually have a similar way of operating? Do you want to actually have a similar culture? Now that doesn’t mean, I want to be clear when I say that, is it doesn’t mean that I’m going to make everybody do everything the way Americans do it. That’s not what I’m talking about is that you do take into account cultural nuances, but do you want one culture inside your company in the way that you’re operating?
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (13:28):
I remember a great quote. Someone said a long time ago, where culture is the smell of a place, and I think you get the smell of a place even in teams or Zoom. Have you ever seen that? Right? You have to decide if you want to do that. The same rules apply, Tom, if you have satellite offices doing it the same way that I’m talking about. The company that I’m referring to you, they’ve acquired all these organizations. Can you imagine you acquired all these companies around the world, but you’ve never actually sat them all down to create even a leadership team from a competitive standpoint to say, okay, let’s say we don’t want one culture, and how do we organize ourselves as a think tank? A leadership think tank.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (14:19):
When competitors come at our feet, which they will, how do we become more anticipatory for it? I actually think that even if you choose to not have one culture, I do think organizing yourselves in the beats that I mentioned before, about vision narrative, team commitment, impact guide, I still think those rules apply, especially if you have satellite offices. Because the one thing I hear in satellite offices and I was in a satellite office many moons ago, is that you feel so isolated. You don’t feel part of the mothership unless someone comes visits. And so you want to make sure that you have that experience and so you have to create it for people.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (15:05):
I had this conversation with an executive yesterday, entertainment company. And I said to her, “Don’t go through this exercise unless you’re actually going to use it every day to calibrate your work.” We’re going to need to make decisions, how we making our decisions calibrated against what we’re actually saying that we’re committed to, or what our narrative actually says. And if it’s not, then we either look at what we’ve actually committed to or we eliminate it entirely.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (15:37):
The satellite idea makes a ton of sense because really satellite could be your home office now and people could be feeling isolated or completely connected to their work and what they’re doing. I know our organization has run primarily remote from inception and it’s been great. Long term staff and people and there’s clearly a connection point that they’re feeling to the organization despite working from a home office.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (16:12):
Absolutely.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (16:14):
One of the things too, you mentioned or talk about, is kind of your vision, or I guess not your vision, really what your opinion or viewpoint is on where things are going with remote workers, with remote staff, remote offices. How do you see just this whole impact changing, staying the same, more of it, with a lot of what you’re talking about, because I’m sure leaders is the COVID thing seems like we’re through the thick of it, in terms of lockdowns and shutdowns, it seems like we’re kind of through that. But this hybrid remote thing, portable office is not going away. At least it seems that way. You’re in this world every day and seeing this. Where do you see this going? What do you see happening?
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (17:05):
It’s such an interesting question because I think some of this is generational too. Well, there’s a few ways to answer this. One, I was talking to an executive the other day who’s head of marketing at a large company. And she was saying that she and her peers were sitting together and talking about full return to office. Right now they’re starting to request three days a week and that I’m sure will eventually leave into five days. They’re trying to figure out the three day week. I’m sure lots of people in this situation figure out the three day week situation. How do we get people to come back when people are like why are you having us come back, we’ve shown you that we don’t have to do this in an office.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (17:54):
I said to her, “Well, what did you all decide?” You know, smart people in her room, right? You know, brainstorming session, and she’s like, “We went round and round and we could not solve it.” She’s like no one wanted to make a decision, no one wanted to solve it. And what I said to her was, “You have to change the question.” So the question is, how do we get people back into an office? It’s not the question. The question is what kind of environment do we want to create for people that their desire to come back will be greater than the desire to stay home? And let’s take home off it.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (18:29):
What kind of environment do we now, what we know today about the world and the way we want to shape the workforce and the workplace, what kind of environment do we want to create for people goes back to the portable work culture that when they’re here, because if they’re only going to be here three days a week, what is it going to be like? Three days a week, you’re going to experience this, and then two days a week, you’re going to experience that.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (18:52):
What’s the kind of workplace that we want to create for people that actually is sustainable. That people can experience it through every day. Because I had one executive say to me, so funny, she’s like, “You know, I have people coming to me and saying these young people, Gen Z, they don’t want to come to work and they don’t want to come to a workplace, and I have people complaining to me like these young people.” And I said to her, what are you inviting them into? What’s so appealing anymore? You know, people have choice, and so what are you bringing them to? I do believe, and it’s controversial, because even I think it was someone in a senior executive in HR at Google was saying that hybrid is not going to stay and it’s not going to work.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (19:41):
I actually do think that a hybrid remote environment is going to be here to stay, and I do think some of this is also generational because most people that I’m seeing, I’m just talking about clients that I’m interacting with, that it’s very generationally dispersed about who wants people to be in the office full time. I do think that you’re going to have a hybrid because also there are things that are really important for people to do together. Comradery, collaboration. There’s a degree of that you can absolutely do virtually. We’ve done things virtually the last two years that I could never have imagined us doing before, and there are things that absolutely being in the presence of each other, and that energy, and that juice like brainstorming sessions, I do think that there’s something about that that’s precious and the way you create relationships when people are in person.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (20:40):
I do think that it’s here, but I think it’s almost like evidence that demands a verdict to see whether or not it stays. If you think about it, the workplace, the construct of it, hasn’t changed in decades. It would not have changed unless COVID happened. And so now COVID happened and we’re showing people that we’re real naysayers to hybrid that people can actually get a lot done remotely. There’s a lot more questions now because there’s monitoring technology that creates this suspect of big brother watching. I do believe it’s here to stay, but I think we’re still working out what that looks like so employers feel that they know that people are doing the work and then people are approving that, hey, I can work no matter what hour of the day and I can get it done and still have those relationships with people that make it important for me to come to work and stay at work.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (21:36):
Yeah. Well I think this circles back, all of this ties back in really with the message from the book you released about really having these KPIs established ahead of time and actually be monitoring them as you’ve used the phrase to be calibrating against on a regular basis, otherwise it’s just words. It’s meaningless without this calibration, without this checking, without monitoring how well you are doing or not doing, and then adjusting accordingly based on what you’ve predetermined to be important. And like all things I would imagine if you determine later on that those items you originally thought were maybe important to be included, need to be changed, then you change those and measure the new things that you have coming on.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (22:26):
That’s right.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (22:28):
This will be a great time for us to make a transition here.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (22:32):
Okay. Let’s do it.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (22:34):
We ask every guest the same four questions that we ask every guest before they go. And the first one is, has there been a miss or two that you’ve had along the way and something you’ve learned from it?
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (22:46):
Oh yeah. Oh wow. I said to you when we started this conversation, I said, I think misses are critical because if you don’t have misses, you don’t have learnings. And otherwise everything is like, oh, it’s great. You remember your biggest step in it? Right. So let’s see there’s many so I’ll give you big and mild. Okay. So I remember years ago when I was a corporate executive and I worked for someone that I wound up feeling that I did not respect and I said to myself, I have to exit the company. And so what I started to do is I was orchestrating my own exit. But what happened was, is I was orchestrating my own exit, I was so clueless as to how I was being in rooms with other executives or decisions I was making.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (23:41):
I just did the dumbest stuff. My boss said to me, I don’t want you to go to New York for something. I forget what it was. It was a long time ago and I went ahead and booked a trip to New York for work. You know, it was like that kind of stuff that was just so ridiculous that when someone … If you’re going to go, exit gracefully, but don’t also muddy the waters on your way out. Right? So there’s that.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (24:08):
Then it was funny a couple weeks ago I was on the phone with a senior executive who was a coaching client and it’s interesting because when I coach people, there is not advice giving that I give. It’s very much 80% them talking and me 20% listening. I remember I went on some soapbox about something and I could see her face and she looked like, what the hell is she talking about? And she got really impatient. She was like, no, no, no, it has nothing to do with that. And I said to her, did anything I say to you resonate at all? And she goes, not really. I’m very confused. It was like, oh, how to pause, reflect more artfully, how not go off in your own tangent, so I think those are severe step ins and a little bit milder step ins.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (25:04):
Yeah. Oh, thank you. Well, thank you for sharing that. On the other end of things, you’ve shared some success stories with us throughout the interview so far, but are there any highlights or makes that you’d like to share additionally here?
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (25:21):
There’s so many. I would say there’s two things that come to mind. One is I remember when COVID first started, we, as many people did, band together to create all these different kind of global virtual programs. And I remember the first day that someone said to me at the end of leaving a six month program that we did called RISE. And she said, I have fallen in love with my job all over again, as a result of being in this program. I remember saying to her, I can now retire. That was one thing. The second thing I would say is we deploy a mentoring program through a company, it’s a multinational company, and we do it in North America and it was so interesting because the intention of the head of HR in North America and I, when we originally deployed it, is because one of our zone performance indicators is culture ready and the lens of that is creating a workplace culture where coaching and mentoring is just what people do.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (26:25):
Just imagine working someplace where no matter what, you know that you’re going to be mentored and coached. No matter what, in the truest sense of the word. What we committed to when we started is that we want to both be out of a job, so we’ll deploy a mentoring program that we don’t even need anymore after a few years. What we’re seeing now is the seeds of it that’s growing inside the organization. That people are starting to do this just as a matter of automatic course of who they are and who they’re being in how they’re leading. It’s outside of their spheres of influence. I’ll put that in air quotes, spheres of influence. And so I would say those are just two recent ones that are just very gratifying and very humbling too.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (27:12):
Those really sound like just memories you can’t forget.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (27:16):
No.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (27:18):
Wow. What an impact. That’s incredible. Well, the next question we like to ask is have you used any multipliers as you’ve grown professionally, personally, that you’d like to share?
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (27:32):
It’s so interesting. Okay. If you say growing my business, I would say mentors. I don’t know if there’s a sphere you’re going in, but I would just say mentors, which are critical, because you just don’t know what you don’t know and I think that when I was describing that misstep early on, had I had, or sought out mentors, I think I probably would’ve been in a better situation. I think providing people what they need, asking people what they need, and actually listening to people. Cause sometimes what I find is people struggle a lot. As a business owner, you’re going, what do people really want? And then you’re trying to come up with all these clever ideas and I’m just like, you just ask them. It’s so much easier, you know? And then also we do create and deploy a lot of content and practical so I would say that’s been very impactful.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (28:26):
Personally, I would say dear family, dear friends, journaling. And the journaling that I do is journaling almost in question form. If I’m trying to be an observer of my own actions, I’m making this up, but let’s say I’m feeling disappointed or I’m feeling that there’s an upset, really questioning myself of what’s creating that for me and why am I feeling that? What’s contributing that? Also, physical exercise every day, I think there’s so many health benefits. It’s off the chart. Hobbies, meditation, and also my wife and I started a foundation this year and so that has just grew personal passions. I would say there’s a lot, but I think even if you drink water, that in itself could grow yourself and disciplined about it every day, Tom. Okay.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (29:25):
Good point. Point well taken. I know for me, and probably lots of folks that’ll listen to this can say, I do not drink enough water. So, yes.
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (29:37):
Key takeaway.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (29:38):
Yes, that’s right. That’s right. Well, and the final question we like to ask every guest is what does success mean to you?
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (29:47):
There’s two things that come to mind. One is to echo what I’ve been saying this whole time. One is really seeing and creating workplace cultures of trust, respect, and psychological safety, period. The second thing is living every day, a personal and professional legacy, which is bringing human dignity to the planet. To me, if those two things are happening on a daily basis, and we feel like I’m working towards that in some machination, that to me is success.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (30:23):
Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I love the concept here of what you’ve shared so far and as we bring this to a close, is there anything you are hoping to share or get across or haven’t had a chance to yet?
Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone (30:36):
You know, I would say it maybe echoes what we were talking about before that I think what everyone’s facing right now is that people are leaving their organizations. I have a client of mine that’s trying to recruit almost 300 people. Three hundred people inside of an organization. I know, makes your eyes stand out. I would say really if business leaders and business owners want to reverse this trend and keep great talent inside the organization, we’ve got to focus on building organizations with the foundation of trust, respect, and safety and there is a financial return to that investment. Just remember that old adage, that things started off as a profit problem, but it’s a people problem. And then I would encourage people to download, go to website, like what you said, download a book, Better leaders. Better people. Better results. Six eye opening strategies to thrive through change you didn’t ask for, because we talk about how to build an organization that keeps great talent within the organization.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (31:38):
Esther, thank you so much again for a fantastic interview. And let’s go ahead and jump into today’s three key takeaways. Takeaway number one is when Esther talked about culture being the smell of the place, and I thought that was a great way and we opened the podcast with that statement, but she talked about how seeing and creating workplace cultures of trust, respect, and psychological safety is important, and that you need to measure how your culture is in line with your mission, vision, values, and other related strategic items. And in her book, which is available at thereadyzone.com, it’s a free download. She gives six KPIs to provide a way to help you implement and measure that. And I know we didn’t get a chance to get into it in the interview. So just giving a plug for her free download that she’s offering there.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (32:33):
Takeaway number two is she asked several questions and I thought these were great. So we’re going to ask them again. It says, what kind of an environment do we want to create that will make people want to come back to work instead of working at home? I thought that was a great question as we start thinking about if you’ve been working from home or maybe you have had staff working from home, or maybe this hybrid environment, and she also asked what is a kind of workplace that we want to create that is sustainable and think of it this way, what are we inviting our people back into because now with people being able to work from home or this hybrid, they have a choice on what they want to do. And I thought when Esther talked through those points, it was just phenomenal.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (33:21):
Take away number three, I thought this was great. She shared this as one of her misses, but she talked about not exiting gracefully from a previous position that she had held. And I thought that was just a great lesson or reminder for all of us. We want to exit gracefully as we depart from one, whether it’s a career or a job, or a position, or maybe it’s with a customer, or a client, or maybe it’s with some philanthropic enterprise or institution that we’re involved with. Exit gracefully, kind of that old adage. Don’t burn bridges. I thought that was a great way to close out for our third takeaway. And now it’s time for today’s win-win.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (34:13):
Today’s, win-win comes from when Esther talked about her personal and professional mission or legacy that she’s striving for. And she said her personal and professional legacy is bringing personal dignity to the planet. I thought that was fantastic and it reminded me of something that I’ve tried to do with our company, and it’s something I would hope that you, if you haven’t done for your business or for you personally as the leader of your organization, for you to really sit down and determine what is that personal mission or that purpose statement for you? I can say for me, Esther shared hers just as a reminder again, she said bringing personal dignity to the planet. For me, it’s to inspire and foster greatness. That’s something that I really have a burning passion for and so that’s something we try to exude through our organization and the companies I’m involved with.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (35:09):
What is your personal mission and purpose statement? And I think if you can clarify that and put that out, it’s probably already in action. If you haven’t really thought about it’s probably already there. You just need to find it, and name it, and talk about it, and I think it will help give you a lot greater clarity on where you’re taking your business and your life. And that’s the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review, and remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise your business or take their franchise company into the next level. Please connect with us at bigskyfranchiseteam.com Thanks for tuning in and we look forward to having you back next week.