Live from Cleveland, Ohio, it's C-level game plans with host Norman Hood. Welcome to the show, Robert White. And as some people call you the Robert White. I want to jump in here today and talk about some people that you've actually worked with. And to start off, can you give me an example of someone who came in at your pro to your program at the very beginning and maybe struggled with them saying anxiety, resistance to change, didn't want to open up those types of things. Tell me about a real client you worked with who faced those and how you helped them get past it. Well, there have been many, but it quickly comes to mind is uh a restaurant and hotel management company that was severely hit during uh one of our economic recessions. And what I learned in the initial interviews with the top team was that people were demoralized by what they described as a management screaming at a, a vivid, a vivid way to occur. And uh what we did there was we worked with all of the managers and assistant managers in that, in that culture to get them more grounded in purpose and vision and values, and not only to get them to be declared. But also to have them be implemented and measured and worked on on a, on a regular weekly basis. And in that industry that year, the entire industry was down 5%, uh, and we were up 8% for the group and And in that industry, maybe more important is a turnover cut in half. That's that bedevils the uh hospital and the other thing, uh a little more difficult to measure, but the CEO and having fun, OK, still keep that client in mind. Can you recall the moment when the light went on and they could see that what you were telling them was the best path forward? Uh, we begin most engagements with a 3-day intensive where people tell the truth about where they are, where they want to be, and, uh, and, uh, start working on any kind of a gap that's there. And in that 3-day session, it was that people, uh, and it's an interesting thing for the hospitality industry. People love their work. That's what's under all of the stress and all of the shouting at each other and all that stuff. They actually love serving people, and what we got them to see by sharing their stories, the, the stories they take home to the, to their husband and family, the, the stories they're proud to brag about with their friends, those people, uh, when they told those stories, magic started to happen. Last question about this client, so. Can you tell me from that very first week when this got started, what happened? That week A month later and a quarter later, how did they progress through your system? Well, the big progress was actually being profitable during a time when the entire end is not, and, uh, you know, profitability make everything right, uh, and, uh, and they were getting along. They were in fact having fun and working for them was that when they, when they went into the COVID shutdown, their industry. And, and they survived it, uh, you know, a little bit of government help, a little bit of, uh, custoty on takeout food and, and all that. But they, that they were flexible. They looked at what's our purpose for being here even during this tough event, the COVID shutdowns, uh, but let's take care of. Each other customers and let's, let's, let's come out of this strong. So now we're gonna move on to something else. Lots of people doing the leadership training. We all, we hear about it all the time. You go on LinkedIn, you find thousands of people calling themselves leadership consultants. So in my experience, if I take any industry and take 100 people. There's a 1% that clearly is better, and I found that's often based upon something they do that's different, not following the default method of doing things. So in, in the work that you do, what do you think makes your method different than most of the others? You know, Norm, I have, uh, the experience of having been there and done that. I built a company from 0 to 200 and, and, uh, I did it in a, in a tough atmosphere. Uh, we operated in 7 countries, 15 training centers. We won in our game, and the key to that was the culture that we built at, uh, results as opposed to reasons, stories, and excuses are the guideline. And in all of our work that's working today with that's what we work on. What, what are your results? No, uh, let's, let's get to what's real here and celebrate, uh, what we're actually doing and what we're. So now I wanna talk a little bit about the pattern of your results maybe versus default. I heard a little bit about your method. So how does the pattern of your results differ from someone else? Maybe in the amount of time it takes, maybe an amount of how much fun people are having, you already mentioned that, maybe the extent of the results. So how would you compare yourself to other processes in terms of the pattern of results? Personally and on behalf of my team, I think that difference is that we've been there and done that. We're all experienced business people. Yes, we study the latest information on leadership development and the human potential. And with 1,400,000 graduates of our programs over the years, we've got some real on the ground practical tips for people so that they can apply them quickly. In how they run a sales meeting and how they hire and how they frankly and uh these are things that are theoretically sound but more importantly have been proven in practice. Good. I'm looking at your process right now. I know you have, it's very well defined 3 phases, 3 steps of each phase, all sequential. So based upon your experience and the Probably thousands of people you worked with. How did you come up with this specific order and why is the order important? You know, when you've actually done something and it worked, then you do more of it, and if it doesn't work, you discard it. Now that sounds too simple. And yet when in working with clients, I find that people are some, uh, usually subconscious belief that, and they want to keep things, keep doing things the same way even when they don't work. Uh, doing is to uh get people grounded in adaptation, in innovation, in looking at what they do honestly and, uh, stop living in those reasons, stories, and excuses for why they don't have what they want. Moving on. We found out a little bit about real customers you've worked with. We've heard about what makes you different. Now here's the million dollar question How do you know it works? So let's just take, take another example. Just give me an example of somebody and how you knew that the system worked when it was done. Uh, you know, we had a client actually in the industry that I've spent most of my life in, in the industry, and, uh, he became a client, he first of all, became a graduate of one of our programs, but he became a client because he was supplementing his company's income with his personal coaching and public speaking, kind of a famous guy. But he was losing over $100,000 a month training business. Uh, and what we did with them was bring the team together and first focus more on what they were doing right. Somehow they had developed a belief that what we need to do is be time. Kind of like the, uh, you know, those famous sessions in communist China where people had to declare what terrible people they were and not, not the party. And, uh, they were actually doing that in their corporate culture and that was what was stopping them from looking at what they were really quite good at. That's definitely some proof. How, as they were moving forward, how did you measure and track to make sure they were actually going to get the result that you promised them? Well, I was blessed in that particular situation to doing a lot of the work myself, and of course, I had lived for 22 years building that kind of a company. And what was helpful was for the leadership of the company to start really celebrating every small success, to uh uh really track our daily and weekly and monthly goals. Here's, I've uh uh done a lot of work with vision, more importantly, work on purpose, and one of the ways we find out if people are aligned to Their purpose and vision is by shortening the time windows. And, uh, you know, our particular methodology is 90 days, not 5 years, not 10 years. What do we do, what do we need to get done in the next 90 days and put all the attention on breaking that down into weekly and daily goals in, in Some areas of the way an organization works, so it's, it's paying attention to what is it we declared, what did we make, uh, what's our level of commitment to what we say we want. I'm focusing on step one now. When people just come into the program, I know it's step one. I think the goal and the result is you want everybody to agree on what they need to do. Do you ever have to put constraints on that? For example, I might agree to something because if I didn't, I'd lose my job. So what constraints do you put on getting that result? A big thing is group process. The, that 1,400,000 graduates from our programs, all of those programs were experiential, that we have learning games, simulations, conversations that lead to commitment, that are designed to have people see not just what they say, but what they actually do action. Uh, you know, you can now get a mission statement, not an expression we happen to use, and go online and have, uh, uh, AI build you a mission statement. That will be vanilla, of the question, right? It, it kind of looks like, uh, on the other hand, if you put people in a room together and have them honest with each other, uh, but first with themselves and then with each other on what they really want to accomplish, and they declare it to their peers. You know, in the military, it's often said that you don't fight for the government, you don't fight for the army or the navy, you fight for the person next to you. And a lot of what we do is to get people to that place of realizing they're in a foxhole with someone else and that they need to measure up to that person's expectations and they've got a partner. Uh, it's, it's all a matter of shifting a mindset from victim to accountable that I'm in this game and wow, that's a great interview. You did a wonderful job. I appreciate it and I hope I get you to come back sometime. I'm looking forward to it, Norm. Yes, great question.