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      In this podcast we talk with Rom LaPointe, executive coach and founder and CEO of Capricorn Leadership. Having served as the CEO of ten privately held companies, Rom brings a unique perspective to the coaching he provides for business leaders and their teams. He shares with us what he learned from the six companies in which he had a positive exit and, even more important, from his three failures. His biggest learning: You can have a great idea, but you won’t succeed unless you assemble the right team to execute on that idea. He also talks about creating a legacy as an entrepreneur and the importance of influencing others in a positive way.

       

      So if you want to know:

      • Why beginning entrepreneurs need to say “no” to some opportunities
      • The key traits of a healthy team
      • Why entrepreneurs should “build to sell”
      • How meeting quarterly with your team can “stop the hamster wheel”
      • Tips for choosing a business coach

       

      About Rom LaPointe

      Rom LaPointe is a business coach and advisor to CEOs, leadership teams and boards. Prior to founding his own coaching company, Capricorn Leadership, Rom served as CEO for nine privately held companies. Rom is a member of Entrepreneurs Organization (EO), a global network of 15,000 leading entrepreneurs focused on personal and business growth. He has served in many leadership roles in EO and is currently the Global Leadership Committee Chair. More information about Rom and his company is available at his website, CapricornLeadership.com

       

      About Lois Sonstegard, PhD

      Working with business leaders for more than 30 years, Lois has learned that successful leaders have a passion to leave a meaningful legacy.  Leaders often ask: When does one begin to think about legacy?  Is there a “best” approach?  Is there a process or steps one should follow?

      Lois is dedicated not only to developing leaders but to helping them build a meaningful legacy. Learn more about how Lois can help your organization with Leadership Consulting and Executive Coaching:
      https://build2morrow.com/

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      Transcript



      – Welcome everybody to today’s “Building My Legacy” podcast. I have with me today, Rom LaPointe. Rom LaPointe is CEO of Capricorn Leadership, executive coach and he’s a– You’re in the EOS system, correct?


      – I have used EOS and many companies, yes.


      – Okay. So we’ll talk a little bit about that. He has served as CEO for 10 privately held companies, six he founded, four were acquired. And so he has a rich, long history of working with companies. And I think that’s so important ’cause I think a lot of times people put up the shingle of consultant or coach and they have no experience and you go, “Wow, okay, was this worthwhile, what I got?” He’s also the father of what he says are four lucky children. So, I love that. He is currently global leadership committee chair for Entrepreneurial Organization. And so he really has devoted his time and energy to developing businesses, growing them and helping them get solid, solid foundation and footing. So with that, Rom, tell us, how did you get into this? You don’t just drop into becoming a Leadership thought leader.


      – Well, thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. And I’m looking forward to our conversations. How did I get here? Well, I was actually raised in Detroit, Michigan and went to school to be an engineer. And my parents thought they’d hit the lotto when I got my job at Ford Motor Company with electrical engineering and communications, two different degrees. And I loved the opportunity there at Ford Motor Company, but it just didn’t feel right. And I didn’t know this at the time, but that was a culture thing. I wasn’t really a great fit for that culture. And so left there for a mid-size company that had about 300 employees and was able to really advance quickly. And so my entrepreneurial spirit bit me, I was into my early 30s when I started my first firm. And so all through those years, I never had a formal business training or finance training. It was all the school of hard knocks, as they say. And so I enlisted a lot of coaches and consultants over the years. Being a longtime member now, 17 years of the Entrepreneur’s Organization, EO. We’ve got lots of great learning resources that come to us, including coaches, consultants, scaling up coaches, EOS implementers. And so we are exposed to a lot of that thought leadership. And so I’ve hired them, as the CEO, I had hired a lot of people. And a few years ago I was selling my last business. I had moved, I’d hired a president to replace my role and was chairman of the board. And I had to figure out what was next for me. Was it buying a company? Was it starting something new? And I decided that it was time to really start to have some fun and play a consultant coach role for others, which I’d been doing informally. But I decided to formalize that. So I was certified in a few different assessments and strategic planning models and then started my practice called Capricorn Leadership.


      – So tell me a little bit, what do you do at Capricorn first of all, and then we’ll move from there.


      – Sure. Well, a lot of people ask me about Capricorn, the name. And so the quick answer, my wife thought it was a good idea. And so I’ve learned to listen to her over the last 27 years. The reason we picked it though, was I asked the question, “What does Sir Isaac Newton, “what do Muhammad Ali, Elvis Presley “and Benjamin Franklin all have in common?” And so those are all sort of iconic leaders in sports and music, and science and technology that have inspired me over the years. And they’re all Capricorns. It turns out there’s a lot of really, really interesting leaders that were Capricorns. Maybe it’s ’cause of the, you know, early January birth. I don’t know. The traits that we share, commonly are ambition and patience and some people call it stubbornness, but we wanna make things happen. We want to get things done and make our mark, make our legacy. And so Capricorn Leadership helps mid-size companies, small and mid-size companies. So anywhere from, you know, the mean I would say is in the 20 to 50 million dollars in revenue, some are smaller. Some are bigger. I do work with billion dollar plus companies, including a publicly traded company. But most of them are private mid-size companies that have a few, a hundred or so employees. And they’re at that point where they’re reaching a barrier of growth. So they’ve had good success, you know, they certainly have customers and employees and they have a culture in place. And so, they get a little stuck sometimes. So how do you go to that next level? So Capricorn comes in and instead of trying to fix them or turn them around, ’cause they’re already good successful companies. We have a process where we do a tuneup, so to speak, my Detroit automotive language comes through, we do a diagnostic scan. You know, we assess the leadership team and the culture and the strategy. And then we work collaboratively with the senior team to develop a much different, more dynamic business plan. And we start to operationalize the culture in a different way. And we link the people in the organization through culture, to the strategy. And then it turns out being a 90 day, every 90 days, we’re coming back together to adjust the plan accordingly and measure the results. And so, it’s fantastic for me to work with, you know, a couple of dozen different companies in a close basis every quarter to help guide them through their growth.


      – So, how do people find you, Rom?


      – You know, most of my clients today are coming from referrals. And so it’s wonderful to have that momentum going. But I certainly love talking to folks and just sharing in workshops and speaking engagements, the tools and the processes that I found to be successful. But the website CapricornLeadership.com is a great way to find more about us. The blog there is updated frequently. So we’ve got lots of interesting ideas and things to download there. Plus LinkedIn for Rom LaPointe at LinkedIn. I certainly have a growing network and happy to connect.


      – Wonderful. And we’ll have information about you in the show notes as well. So people will have multiple ways to get a hold of you. I wanna talk a little bit about what you have shared in terms of not having culture fit. That’s what you discovered when you went to Ford and first began. And then from that, you’ve kind of moved into, what does that mean relative to teams? Talk a little bit of about that, if you would, please.


      – Sure.


      – Because I think teams are something we struggle with a lot.


      – Well, first of all, the culture fit, you know, for me, and again, this was a long time ago, this was 30 years ago or so. So at that time, I can’t speak to how Ford Motor Company is today. I have one of their product and it’s a great truck. But at that time, it really mattered to my manager and the people around me, you know, things like who you went to lunch with. And you know, what sort of car you drove. Everything had a little political tinge to it. And so it didn’t seem to matter so much of the work that I did. It was kind kind of who I was connected to, and that just didn’t feel right to me as a young person at the time. Plus it was a very big organization. And so I felt a little lost in that personally. And so I think going to a smaller firm, which had a few hundred people, was a better fit for me at that time. And still is today where I can have an impact. And so I’ve always been one of those types of people that wanted to be able to, you know, share my thoughts and be listened to. And I think most people want that, to be honest. So, teams then, to come back to that, what I’ve found in my experience running startups to acquired second stage companies and growing them and scaling them, is it was always about the team. I’ve learned a lot from my three big failures. I mean, I’ve lost investors and my own money, millions of dollars through not having, even if was a great idea, didn’t have the right team assembled to execute on those great ideas. And I’ve also had some very good successes where I’ve sold companies and made lots of money, thankfully, where that’s a measure of the success of the company, because of the team.


      – I wanna go back before we go down that path very far. I wanna go back to your failures. What were your biggest, let’s say your three biggest–


      – Do we have to?


      – Yes. If you’re willing. You don’t have to. I think the audience would like to know, because we all worry about failure.


      – Sure.


      – That’s one of the biggest fears that entrepreneurs have. And so I think sometimes bad decisions get made out of fear of failure and we end up failing.


      – Yeah. Yes.


      – So if you would speak about your three biggest learnings or one biggest learning that you took away, that would be helpful.


      – Well, my first first company that didn’t work out well was in real estate. And so that was acquiring properties and then doing property management, so commercial and residential. And the issue there was, as you probably know, it takes a lot of capital. And so we had a lot of our money at risk and the people that I partnered with, because I needed to assemble a lot of capital. I did not spend the time to really understand what made them tick, who they were, how they worked. And so we didn’t have very clear roles established in that company. I think we all, ’cause it was another thing we were doing on top of our day jobs. I think we all felt like we would just kind of figure it out and that at lack of rigor, in terms of the team building and leadership structure and decision making, that’s what made that crumble. We just didn’t have our act together when it came to who was gonna make the decisions and how we were gonna decide things. Some it was simple governance, but also, we didn’t have a leader or a managing director of that group. It was meant to be all partners and it just didn’t work out. And then the other subtext there was the people that I partnered with. I didn’t know very well and didn’t spend time getting to know them and they just valued things differently than I did. And so we talk about core values a lot, but that really comes through when there’s lots of money on the line and you see how people really act, what their characters were like. So that was one example. And the second one was different. It was after years of success in various areas in business. And we had a good idea to invest in a startup software company. And what we discovered was we had a great idea that we liked, but we didn’t do any real investment in the marketing, market research or user sort of market testing of those ideas. I wish we would’ve known about the lean startup back then or sort of the minimum viable products. Instead, we spent a lot of money developing something we were proud of, but we didn’t have a good market for it. And so that market fit piece and then marketing that to our ideal customers was underfunded. And because of that, our resources were sort of trapped in that sum cost of technology. And we weren’t able to pivot when we needed to. And so, we could make that one work.


      – So let’s move on to your successes.


      – Thank you.


      – It was helpful though, to hear that, because I think it takes courage to take a look at what didn’t work and those relationship aspects are sometimes the hardest because we’re a part of it, right?


      – Yes, yes. Lois, I would just say, you know, when I come back to it, I don’t wanna blame anyone else for those things. Every mistake or big issues, it was my responsibility from a leadership perspective. And I’m not just saying that, I truly mean that. And I’ve learned much more from those. And I keep applying those, what I learned from those into the work that I do at Capricorn now.


      – Okay. Onto success. What do you think is most important for an entrepreneurial company getting started? And they’ve gotten through that first rush of customers, they’ve got employees and they’re now ready to grow. What are some of the things that they really need to think about to have success?


      – Well, from an entrepreneurial perspective, one of the challenges that I see a lot and that I have as well is saying no to things. And so without a plan and without clarity on what you’re good at, profitable at, and able to deliver well from a quality perspective, without really understanding that and doing some work on the business, really looking at it as a system and understanding where you are, without embracing that reality, that brutal truth, it’s very easy to just take the next opportunity. And to just move from one opportunity to the next opportunity. And all of a sudden, you’re probably creating a lot of interesting, exciting ideas, but you’re not delivering and executing well on those core business areas. I’ve seen many entrepreneurial companies drift. They drift away, they found something good. Do they use that success to do other things that they’re not as good at, or they’re not as prepared to do well at. And so I would think having a plan and knowing what the current state looks like, as well as the future state and then making decisions based on that plan, as opposed to what feels right or what seems like a good opportunity. Most opportunities may be compelling. But without that filtering process to say, “Is this the right decision for us right now?” We can waste a lot of resources. And I see that happening a lot.


      – What are the leading indicators of drifting? How do you know when you’re drifting? ‘Cause when you’re in–


      – Sure.


      – In the muck, you don’t always see what’s there.


      – Yes. There’s a couple of tools that we use. And so one is try to intrude from Jim Collins, which is the hedgehog concept. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the hedgehog–


      – Yes. But please describe it. ‘Cause people in the audience may not.


      – It’s a very simple idea of– It’s a Venn diagram. So if you had three circles that come together, intersect. Those three circles represent the things that you want to do over and, and over again. And the reason it’s called a hedgehog is the hedgehog is this cute little critter that doesn’t do very much. It’s kind of, you know, kind of boring in a lot of ways, just keeps doing what it does really well. The mortal enemy of the hedgehog is the sly fox. And so the sly fox becomes the archetype for those CEOs that are very, maybe charismatic and entrepreneurial, but they’re always moving to the next shiny object. And so the hedgehog does three things. The hedgehog concept is three things. What can we be best in the world at, what is our company or our team can do better than anybody else within our given sandbox. So our world might be the great lakes. Our world might be the U.S. Our world might be North America, but whatever our world is, can we be the best at that? Number one or number two in that category. That’s one circle. The next is, what is our passion? So what do we really get excited about? Is it problem solving? Is it technology? Is it innovation? Is it customer service? What are we really passionate about? And so if our best product and service fits with our passion, that’s fantastic. And then the third one that makes it all work for a business is how does that drive our economic engine? So what I’m saying is an opportunity might come into us that fits our best in the world, say we’re the best in the world at software. And the passion is solving problems. So if we’re really good at software and we solve problems, but it doesn’t make our economic engine run, it’ll be a drift. And so that filter, you’ve gotta be able to say yes to all three of those things to say, that’s a good opportunity for us to pursue and lean into.


      – So just having that mental discipline to ask those three questions can make a big difference.


      – And it’s for the CEO leader as well as the team. And so we developed the hedgehog for the team so that we all are armed with that filter. So we can automatically come back to any opportunity and say, does that really fit for us or not? Or is that something we should consider in the future? That’s one approach. And then the other strategic framework that we use is something called playing to win. That comes from a Proctor and gamble CEO of a book called “Playing To Win.” But it’s a very simple five question strategic framework that defines what winning means and then how we’re gonna get there and do that. That gives us another set of filters to be able to say, does this opportunity support that greater goal? Or does it take us away from them? So couple different mental models that we can actually use as a quick form of filter.


      – That’s really helpful because I think the problem is as an entrepreneur, you’re busy.


      – Yes.


      – You’re running all the time.


      – And you like to be busy.


      – And it is part of your personality. You got it.


      – Yes.


      – And taking that time to ask those– To learn what questions to ask is a problem. It’s easier– I think many entrepreneurs have no problem starting to ask the questions. If they just have taken the time to figure out what questions they should be asking.


      – Yeah. I think so. And then the other piece of this that I find in our work and that I was useful to me as a CEO, was having the space to have these conversations. It’s very easy for the CEO or any given leader to sort of run off a little bit. And they’re having meetings out in the world. We’re out in the world in some meetings, we’re on zoom calls. And ideas and relationships start to show up that are interesting and you want to pursue them. And so having the space, meaning a leadership team that meets on a regular basis and discusses those things, and you rely on your team to help you with those filtering. What’s a good opportunity and what’s not, that’s a helpful thing to have, a team that you trust, that you can do some of the thought experimenting with, is really powerful. And then quarterly, to be able to work on the business for a day or so is very helpful as well. It sort of stops the treadmill or the hamster wheel from just kind of keep going.


      – It’s stopping that hamster wheel. And I think, right, that’s hard. And I think, Rom, one of the challenges that that brings up is having somebody, a confidant with who you can speak, right?


      – Yes.


      – We talk about coaching, we talk about consultants and we spoke briefly about this earlier, but there’s so many out there and many who don’t really know what they’re doing, they’re dangerous to your business actually.


      – Can be, yes.


      – So, when you’re looking for somebody like that, you are working companies now a lot, what should they look for to find a person like you, for example.


      – Sure. And you’re right. There are lots of coaches. And I know you’re a certified coach and there are lots of folks out there that do great work. I think defining that a little more. So, most of my clients, I talk very clearly about the fit for us. So fit doesn’t mean we have to, you know, like each other and be best friends, necessarily. Fit means that if a CEO comes to me– I’m gonna flip it for it for a second. If a CEO or a leader comes to me to be coached, I wanna make sure they’re a fit for me as well, which means they’ve gotta be committed to learning and change. And committed to a process and being, frankly coachable. So, I would ask someone, who’s looking for a coach to check themselves in the mirror to say, “Do I actually want help or not? “Will I listen?” That’s one piece. Another one is to find someone that’s been a peer to you. So a peer, meaning maybe not the exact same industry or experience, but someone that’s been in your seat. There are a lot of coaches out there that are really good people and good listeners that have not necessarily the real world experience of running a company or serving at a corporate level that you have. And so someone that’s a peer, or even further down the road than you have in your experiences, is really, I think critical element to that, making a good connection.


      – You work with entrepreneurs globally.


      – I do.


      – As well. Are there differences when you work in various countries, other countries, what are challenges that are unique to them?


      – Well, I’m very honored in being the, you know, a guy from Detroit, Michigan, very Midwestern, to be a part of the Entrepreneur’s Organization gives me access to fellow entrepreneurs around the world. So we have literally 10 regions around the world. We’ve got 200 chapters, 15,000 plus entrepreneurs. And one of the things that happens, that’s really exciting and cool. I was just in Peru a few weeks ago, you get in a room with entrepreneurs and there’s an energy there. And we have a commonness that sort of belies our language or our cultural differences. And so we can actually agree on things like wanting to learn and get better, wanting to find better ways to be successful, wanting to be problem solvers. So we’ve got these commonalities that I’ve seen across the entire world. Some of the differences are North America, in my experience, tend to want to do more kind of experience sharing. And let me tell you my story. And even if I, you know, have the experience or not, let me give you my opinion. Whereas some other cultures are, maybe more respectful of authority or want to have the sages give them some of the direction and answers. And so neither are bad or good. I think they both have a lot of good things for us to learn. And I also think the different views about staff partners or leadership teams, or people that in our organizations, that level of empowerment and autonomy that we can give, we seem, I think in the U.S. and the west give a lot more autonomy to our folks, which I think is catching on broadly.


      – So for you, what do you see are the possibilities of creating legacy as an entrepreneur? You move into this work, you build it, you sell it, right? And then you maybe move on to another, you build it, you sell it, there’s this rhythm that’s a part of that. Where is legacy? What do you leave? What do you create for yourself in this process? Money, yes. But in addition to that.


      – Well, I’m not the first person to say this for sure, but, you know, on our death beds, we don’t really look at our bank accounts, right? We look at the people that we’re surrounded by and the people that we’ve impacted. And so I learned a long time ago that, you know, a successful life is built up of a lot of successful days. And so every day we have an opportunity to influence other people in a positive way, through a smile, through some direction and support, through some interesting questions and challenges. And so, I think we’re building our legacy constantly, but from an entrepreneurial perspective, I think there’s three types of sort of business motives. There’s this build it to sell it idea, which is, I think, very common and very powerful. In fact, I wish more entrepreneurs would actually build to sell because they’d have more asset value. It’s very easy, with the second one being lifestyle business. It’s very easy in the lifestyle business to sort of enjoy the spoils of a successful company, but not really it with the rigor that you would to build the asset value to sell it. And so you could learn a lot if you had more of a mindset of building to sell. But in both of those cases, the entrepreneur has, you know, is getting a lot of the benefits of a successful business. I think a legacy can be to make sure you’re sharing those with our value stream, through our employees, our partners. And I don’t mean just in money, but in sharing the culture and the positive impact that we can do and we can create with our companies. The third is the legacy business or the multi-generational business. I wanna leave it to my family, or I wanna leave it to a set of employees. With a legacy being the front and center of that. And of course, the first two can become legacy businesses. So you might build a company to sell it, and you realize, I love this company. I love what I built together with my team. Why would I ever sell that? And so you hold onto it and now you’ve gotta start thinking about the next generation. Again, either family or leaders, managers from your employee base. And that succession planning is a weakness in a lot of organizations. So a lot of folks get to, I don’t know, 50, 60, 70 years old, they have a successful business. Then what? What are their options? Is it selling it the only option? Maybe not. If they have a really good depth chart and a good plan, and they’ve developed people over the years. And so just to final answer to that question of legacy is how many lives have you impacted through developing them as leaders? So I believe very much in leading leaders and developing leaders is a part of the legacy.


      – One of the things that you just mentioned, I think it was with the second group, the second type.


      – The lifestyle business?


      – The lifestyle business, is core values. It’s looking at really, what are those core values? Because that’s what allows you to build the team, that is what builds that culture that you were also speaking about.


      – Yes.


      – So if you would speak a little bit about that, please, why core values being so important and how do you manage that?


      – Well, core values have been around for a long time. At least, you know, 30 years and popular business publications longer than that, probably. But as you know, core values alone, you know, core values on the wall or on a plaque don’t mean they’re real. And so every organization that I work with today, they really have some set of core values already determined. If they’re a smaller, newer company, maybe not. So I believe very much in a discovery process to discover what your core values are or to validate the core values you already have. And one of the tools that I use to do that, is I would ask a group of leaders. So if you had five or 10 leaders in a room, not only could they tell me what the core value is, integrity or innovation, or whatever the core values, but then to write a definition of that core value.


      – Ah.


      – And then have each leader compare their definitions. And the truth is, even in the leadership team, you would have five different answers to that. It’s similar to asking them what the strategies of the business, which is another kind of test to do, but from a core value perspective, the word itself or the phrase of the core value means different things to different people. And so if that’s our behavioral standard, we have to operationalize that core value. We have to define it and we have to give real life examples of how it shows up on the job. How would I catch someone doing it the right way? And that takes a lot of work to then cascade that throughout the organization, to all of your managers and leaders throughout the company. And so that’s some of the work that we do to make culture be not just the core values’ words, which are kind of the tip of the iceberg.


      – Right.


      – But to have the whole iceberg developed into a package of tools and resources.


      – Our time is almost up, Rom. What have we left out? What have we just skimmed over that we need to put a little bit more conversation into?


      – Excellent. Well, I just wanna come back to healthy team. So I do a lot of speaking and workshops about high performing healthy teams. And a lot of folks ask me in the Q&A, “How do I know if my team’s healthy or not?”


      – Great question.


      – And I think there are many different tools out there, but I would drive people, direct people to “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team,” which is a great book by Patrick Lencioni. Who’s kind of, you know, who I wanna be when I grow up.


      – He is wonderful, isn’t he? Yeah.


      – He’s a team health guru. And he kind of walks through in that book, a model of the dysfunction. And it’s easy for us to see and diagnose sort of the dysfunction, if you will. But the positive behaviors of a cohesive, healthy team are quite simply, at the base level there’s a real strong amount of trust. And so, that’s hard to know if your team trusts you or not, or if you trust your team, right. It’s hard to know that as a team dynamic, the evidence of that can be, is there healthy conflict on your team? So, when the leader comes back with an idea and the team member says, “Hey boss, let’s go through the hedgehog on that. “Let’s filter that idea to see if it’s a good idea.” If the CEO doesn’t wanna listen to that or shuts down that conflict, or that good question and debate, that’s not a healthy team. If a peer, if a leader on the team and another leader on the team want to disagree and they do it in a way that is productive, and then the team decides the best idea wins. That’s a healthy team. And so having healthy conflict that results in clear decisions are the hallmarks of a healthy team. If you get into a room and everyone agrees with the boss and it’s artificial harmony, that’s probably not a very healthy team. So then I would look back at the trust level and see what we could do there. So, having a healthy team, it’s a lot of work. It’s ongoing work. It’s like any relationship. You’ve got multiple people involved in that team dynamic. And so it’s an ongoing bit of work that we do at Capricorn and lots of other great people do, work on a healthy team. But as a CEO, I would just say the last word, it’s your responsibility to create a healthy team. No one else is gonna do that for you.


      – So, you know, if you look at Lencioni, I love what you’re just saying with a healthy team, trust. And he spends quite a bit of time talking about if there isn’t conflict, healthy conflict, you really don’t have anything working well. And then from that comes the commitments and accountability. And I think if you would talk a little bit about that, ’cause I think it’s that follow up and accountability piece also that so often teams are missing. At least, that’s been my experience. I don’t know if that’s your experience.


      – Well, it is. I mean, nine times outta 10, a CEO will come to me and say, “I want my team to be more accountable. “I wanna hold them more accountable “or I want them to have more ownership and accountability “of their projects, their results.” And so accountability is actually the second to highest thing on that five dysfunctions pyramid. What’s below that is commitment and conflict and trust. And so, we have to kind of dig deeper to understand that. So accountability comes from, I can be held accountable and I can hold other people accountable if we are clearly committing to something we believe in. And if we don’t think it’s the right idea, we’ve already had a chance to say that.


      – Right.


      – We’ve had healthy conflict and we’ve had the ability to be heard. And if the decision then is to still go the direction we don’t agree with, we have to commit and say, “I might not agree with you, “but I’m gonna disagree and commit “to the business team idea “and then do everything I can to have it be successful.” That’s when accountability can happen.


      – I appreciate that. ‘Cause I think that’s the piece that we often gloss over is, I can disagree and commit.


      – Yes.


      – And it’s a choice and we must consciously make that choice. Otherwise we are just bumbling along.


      – And disagree and commit doesn’t mean I disagree and I commit, in words, the actions have to back that up. Meaning I actually might disagree with the decision, but I’m gonna do everything I can, including telling the people that work for me, that it’s the right choice and not spreading any dissent once we’ve made that decision as a team. That’s a part of a healthy team. You’ve got your team’s back, that the company is more important than what your individual opinion is.


      – What else have we missed that we should be talking about? We can go on for a long, long time.


      – It’s been a great conversation. I just encourage any leader, any entrepreneur that if you don’t have a coach, you don’t have to work with me, but find somebody to work with, ’cause it’s pretty lonely when you’re leading a business and to do it alone. So find a group like EO, the Entrepreneur’s Organization, find a coach, find someone that you can trust and share your concerns with. ‘Cause it’s is very difficult to do that if you’re alone. So get someone to work with you on that.


      – And I think with that, you don’t have to be broken and need to be fixed. I think, you know, a lot of times people think of going to a coach as therapy.


      – Right.


      – And there may be therapy, you know, if there’s things that are broken, but really the people who thrive the most from it are people who are healthy.


      – Yes, exactly right. And so, I’m not a therapist, but it is therapeutic to be listened to and to be asked questions. And so it’s just helpful to be coached. Every world class performer in every field has a coach.


      – Rom, on that note, I am going to bring this to a close. Thank you so much for being with us today. And for those of you who are listening, we will have information about Rom in the show notes. Please contact him if you’re an entrepreneur looking to grow your business. He is a great resource and you need find resources of people who have been there, done it, know what they’re talking about, so they can bring you great tools to really help you level up to what it is that you’re wanting to become. So, thank you for being with us today. Remember to visit our website at build2morrow.com with a number two. And also our new website, startwithcollaboration.com. Thank you very much. Thanks, Rom.


      – Thank you, Lois. Thank you very much, take care.

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