How Team Sports Create Stronger Business Leaders

[0:00]  there's a part of me that wants us to have this dialogue because when you have it you grow and yet because it is right now so polarizing there's a part of me that says let's just leave it outside of the workplace I mean I'm sitting in my home office this is my workplace right and so we need to be able to be in environments where we can be ourselves and represent and have that conversation you know in our we're a small team of 18 and we are definitely all kinds of different camps right but we're respect about that and we seek to understand from each other and I think that's the problem right now we're judging and not actually listening to each other my husband and I I can't even remember the TV show I just remember somebody saying put down the gavel take off the robe and stop judging and that has stuck with me and I think

[0:49]  in this political environment we have to stop judging each other and just seek to understand where each other's coming from all right guys welcome back to another episode of the heart and hustle podcast I'm incredibly excited because we have an amazing leader here sitting across this digital table with us we have the president and partner of true you and ml Talent strategies also the COO and partner of srvr Chris Mills welcome to the show thanks Kenan it's great to be here this is going to be an exciting conversation

[1:35]  we're not only going to talk about your heart and hustle what brought you to be this person who sits across from you today but we're also going to talk about some things at the time of recording are really important to workplace culture Human Resources we're going to talk about political discourse in the workplace work life in integration and professional boundaries remote work and the importance of social engagement and so much more so before we kind of get into today's conversation Chris how's your heart doing today you know my heart is full I speaking of work life balance I spent the morning with my godson his wife and their little 18-month-old at the Children's Museum so I'm coming home my heart is full what kind of stuff did you guys explore at the children's museum what was that like you know with an 18-month-old is anything that's sensory right so we were in The Music Room banging on drums and

[2:23]  xylophones we were playing in the sand the water the Train the tractor the carousel you name it we were there and he came home exhausted I bet there's uh so many memories my mom used to always take me to the Seattle Science Center when I was a little kid and that was all interactive all sensory all engagement and stuff like that and it just helped me explore the world at such a young age and so it's so cool that you could be a part of those early memories as well I'm sure that he'll remember those for the rest of his life kenon what's interesting is um Taylor Swift might be in town this weekend for in Indianapolis and so all of the Dinosaurs had on their little Swifty bracelets and there's all these little girls and their little Swifty outfits doing dances and all the things could you imagine being a person in society that has that much

[3:11]  influence over the world where dinosaurs start to kind of get their Swifty on it's crazy wow it was crazy to see so one of the things that I think is really important to talk about we talked a little bit about your titles here and congratulations on the new president roles and so many of these organizations you support super excited for you but you're the partner and president at true you and ml Talent strategies the COO and partner at srvr how first of all how did we get here what type of student were you why did we choose to I would say devote so much of our time and energy into these spaces and why are they important for the work that you do you know um I was a student athlete and so it was all about teams and the engagement that you could have within the teams and I think that kind of set me up for the workplace

[3:58]  right of wanting to be a leader on a team really in so many different ways and um I I never really thought I'd be a partner in a business honestly my husband owns his own business I'm not much of a risk taker so two people owning their own business that's a little risky but I have an incredible partner and the setup is just amazing and he's kind of the Visionary and I'm the implementer so we we compliment and then we've been able to bring on two um smaller percent Partners but two other partners that just you know they just round us out and the team is is fully going and moving forward and as you can tell you know we've added a third business and it just keeps growing oh my gosh so cool here's a question for you a lot of the leaders who I speak to often

[4:47]  were athletes or a part of teams what do you think about that team element of playing sports what are the key things that you were able to transfer into being a leader of an organization and building teams around that do you take any of those corner or those core pillars of those Sports experiences into business the the first one and we talk about this a lot internally because we have a lot of sales people um is we win together and we lose together and sometimes for salese in particular they can feel like they're out on an island and right because they feel this pressure to bring in the cell and we we are all about the fact that that's not how it works we win together we lose together just like a team does right it's not an individual contributor is everybody collectively making it happen and that and so that is really ingrained

[5:36]  um and then I think there's also just this piece of you're going to have different roles on a team just like you do in an organization and they're all important and they all make an impact and so if you discount anybody you're really discounting the team and so I was never a star on any of my teams right but I started and I had a role that was very very important for me to play for the team to be able to win as I get a little bit older um I start thinking I think if you've ever heard of a guy named Alex heroi um he's really big in the entrepreneurship space he's a 34y old entrepreneur has a family office now at the portfolio about businesses that do about 400 or 500 million a year so very successful younger guy yeah he had a post on LinkedIn this morning that said when I was younger I thought me as

[6:24]  the founder and owner of the business needed to take home as much as I possibly could in dollars and equity of the organization as I started getting older I recognized um Bill Gates owns 1% of Microsoft um Jeff Bezos owns 9% of Amazon and Elon owns 17% of Tesla one thing you start to recognize is the more money and value you provide for everybody else the more starts to flow your way as well it kind of gets you out of that scarcity into that abundance mindset if that makes sense in building a team it does and we talk a lot about the abundance mindset because you know it and it goes with your growth mindset at the same time you're going to have times where things aren't going to quite go the way you want them to the cell's not going to close you're going to lose a client that you've been

[7:10]  working with and and you're you can really then start to get into that scarcity piece until you look across the organization and realize how the whole team is doing and that's important and and one of my partners Amber she's great at thinking about it from an abundance mindset and she just that infiltrates the rest of the organization normally I would wait to ask this question but with all of your success and being able to stand up multiple companies are there any key lessons that you would go back to a younger version of Chris if you had five minutes of uninterrupted time where you could sit across the table from her and say Hey listen in the following years you're going to navigate this time here's some mindset challenge or some ways to lean into a mindset these are the things you should focus on as being a leader what advice would you give to that younger version of yourself you know the first one and it's a recency

[7:58]  factor for me Kenan is um to understand how to be purposeful about being a legacy leader because you're going to make a difference and you need to be purposeful about making that difference and I knew at a young age like you make impact on people and yet I wasn't purposeful about it I didn't think about it right I didn't have a plan and to really be that strong leader that's going to leave a legacy you got to really think about it and and um kind of challenge yourself to be that leader and if you don't then it's going to be happen stance and that means that it could turn out in all kinds of different ways and in some ways you don't want it to what do you think your legacy that you're being really intentional about is going to be when

[8:45]  you're you know turning the chapters of this leadership Journey this is going to sound a little selfish a little bit I think but I I definitely um pour into people like I love to pour into people I love to have an impact on people and that's not just just about them being a teammate on my in my organization they're a whole person that works for me right and I want to influence and help them be the best self they can be whether that's with my company another company at home um a parent a sibling whatever that looks like that's what I feel like my legacy is is that I've helped people be that best version of themselves I love that you know because I spend so much time in healthcare there's a terminology that's been used over the last I'm going to say 5 years really heavily it's just whole person

[9:31]  Health right it's mental health cardiovascular physical health our emotional health XYZ when we talk about work I feel like we're in a completely different landscape of how people expect work to be represented in their lives right now at the time of recording this right we have a lot of conversations that are happening everywhere about the current political landscape we've got Kamala and we've got Trump people are really in two camps at this point in time how do you think we can do a better job of helping people feel comfortable to bring those conversations into the workspace or do you feel like it's inappropriate to bring those conversations into the workspace especially with how our lives are kind of formulated today I think it's so hard to bring it into the workplace and um I want it to be okay right there's a part of me that wants us to have this

[10:19]  dialogue because when you have it you grow and yet because it is right now so polarizing there's a part of me that says let's just leave it outside of the workplace but where I ultimately land Canan is realizing that I mean I'm sitting in my home office this is my workplace right and so we need to be able to be an environments where we can be ourselves and represent and have that conversation you know in our we're a small team of 18 and we are definitely all kinds of different camps right but we're respectful about that and we seek to understand from each other and I think that's the problem right now we're judging and not actually listening to

[11:08]  each other my husband and I I can't even remember the TV show I just remember somebody saying um put down the gavel take off the robe and stop judging and that has stuck with me and I think in this political environment we have to stop judging each other and just seek to understand where each other's coming from now I'm a third Camp by the way I'm considering buying a private island and just moving there if you need help on rent or mortgage let me know I'm in I'm 100% in I'm just going there was a a CEO I had on the podcast um out of Indiana as well represents an organization um called Josiah whites and they're a youth I would say um empowerment organization they help individuals who have gotten in

[11:55]  trouble in the judicial system they come to camp and they help build them as Leaders to be be able to kind of change the ways and some of the decisions that they've been making now Matthew was on the podcast and we were talking about the difference of differences and division he said it's okay for us to have differences because differences are things that we can look at understand and be inquisitive enough to explore and see why people think differently and we can come to a mutual understanding but in today's society today it seems like we've leaned super heavy into the division aspect it's us or them it's the othering that we do so well do you feel like why do you feel like this has become so easy for us over the recent years when it's Camp a versus Camp B what do you think's going on as a kid growing up there was always politics right I mean there's there's always

[12:42]  voting and all of the things I think back to like my early 20s um it it was more of that difference versus the division piece and as we've come as a society and we've become more diverse as a society I feel like that diverseness has actually caused Division and that's and and a part of that is because we again as a society aren't accepting people for who they are right um and because we don't do that we start to judge and when we start to judge we start to divide and there's always been political parties but my husband even talked about this we were just talking about this

[13:28]  he's like it used to be you didn't you didn't necessarily vote by party you voted by candidate and now the parties are so divisive in their takes and the direction that they're taking that the society has gone the same way and if you think about it the political ads are more aggressive than they've ever been oh my goodness you are so right I was literally at the early morning 6:00 a.m.

[13:55]  this morning I was getting a haircut and I'm walking into the barber shop we're turning on all the lights and my barber turns on the television first ad that was on there was Donald Trump said this or Sam Brown here in the state of Nevada said that or k is doing this and I was like how do you listen to this stuff all day and she said Keenan honestly it's kind of like white noise at this point in time like emotionally I used to get involved in these ads and these commercials but now they just are coming at us so hot and heavy that it's like I really can't even listen to this stuff anymore do you ever get worried about the overstimulation of media and like all the images that are meant to kind of divide us that we get forced in our face every day yeah I think it's creating a it's it because think about this it's not just it's not TV right it's the social media where it's playing out and it's not just our candidates that are

[14:44]  playing it out I mean the things that people feel comfortable saying on social media that they would never say to you face to face is crazy and I worry about the younger generation because that's their life right I mean for me I have a life outside of TV because I didn't grow up that way I have a life outside of this crazy phone and those sorts of things but that's that's their connection and it's and and it's it's so much easier for me to just quickly like make a snarky comment and I would and I would probably never do it face to face never yeah but that barrier that that's there causes us to feel comfortable doing it yeah the anonymity the distance right is

[15:32]  uh very scary I remember when I was growing up I was born in 1990 um when I was in high school and things like that I used to hear older adults say you guys have lost all interpersonal communication ability and this is on the very cusp of aim and instant messenger and things like that now I think about where we are in a society we've created so much comfort in the ammity of being able to type whatever we want I almost kind of have to think about what is the appropriate way to react to these people online who say these horrible things naturally we can get upset and we can kind of battle back with them but that doesn't do anything I feel like we need to come from a place of empathy to think about this person is in such a bad place they are so hurt that they are now lashing out at other people on the internet to try and make them feel the same way that we feel or they feel which is a really interesting concept to think

[16:20]  about how people want to pull us back down when they're not feeling well but I guess it speaks to the larger kind of mindset of where we're at in society today there's a lot of people hurting there are a lot of people hurting and I have a great friend that teaches empathy that's that's what her job is I mean her company she teaches empathy and her business is exploding because businesses know that they need to help their leaders and all of their team members understand that and I talk about this in a class that I facilitate and it's funny because I'll say empathy right and people are like is it empathy is it sympathy what is it and I said well think about empathy as putting myself in somebody else's issues looking at it from their lens and we're not always willing to do that and that's really where we should

[17:07]  be spending our time especially as Leaders seeking to understand it's a it's an old Stephen cvy habit right it's been around for years but seeking to understand where people are coming from is still a foundational action I'm going to change us into the lens of leaders today especially you know as you started the conversation day you said you know I'm working from home I'm also in my home office office if we look around us I'm not sure about you but we are isolated in our own space we are alone very often in this space together how do you think about the role of leaders being able to empathize and put themselves in someone's situation and their footsteps and shoes when we don't know what's on the other side of the screen I see the a well curated like square that Chris sits in and you see mine but you don't see the other things that are happening in my life how do we kind of put ourselves in the place of

[17:54]  empathy to empathize with people when we don't really know what's going on other than this digital connection yeah you know I think it's important because um and we're also so scrunched on time so let's not forget that right like we're trying to squeeze as much as we can into this little window of time and I I'm a firm believer in regular one toone connection times with my team members right and that's a dedicated time we use it however they want to use it but I want to make sure that during that time we're not just talking business I'm finding out what's going on with with them right and so um I have a good friend she she uses the term um she'll say what's your number because we're comfortable saying on a scale of 1 to 10 how I'm doing but

[18:41]  we're not comfortable saying things like you know what I I'm really anxious today my anxiety is really high we haven't gotten there because people freak out when we say it but if I can say hey I'm a six then a leader can say okay I know where this person's mind is and I know how to then interact with them but you have to start those connection times with checking in on people and it can't be just on your slack or your chat chat Channel it has to be this way even if it's virtual it has to be let me check in on you with all the different organizations that you support and leaders you interact with how are people navigating because this is 2024 we're four years past the pandemic now which is crazy to think about how quickly time has gone but what about these professional boundaries that are so

[19:28]  important in kind of establishing where work lives compared to the rest of the house and the rest of my life what is work life integration conversations look like on your side yeah you know a friend of mine has given me a term that I use now it's called work life Harmony um and I love just the visual that comes with that Harmony and and when I hear music the harmony right like it's just flows much smoother um but the boundaries have to be really and it's and it's up to the person to really do that um and when I say the person I mean the leader right like they need to be cognizant of a team's boundaries and so you know it's it's things as simple Kenan as when I work on the weekends because I know I'm going to

[20:17]  work on the weekends that's me I don't ask my team to do it but I send my emails for delayed delivery and I spread them out over Monday I don't want to I don't want to dump on their inbox and I don't want to do it on the weekend because you know why they're going to feel obligated to respond and as a leader you role model what behavior and what boundaries are going to be acceptable in your organization and if you don't set boundaries for yourself and for the organization then then all of a sudden people are going to be working all over the place the other piece though is I think we also have to understand that some jobs have more flexibility than others and be receptive to the fact that for some people they need to work 6: to 10: in the morning take some time off work

[21:08]  again because they have Elder Care issues and they got to take care of a parent in the middle of the day and and by the way that's a soap box for me because I think we're we're worried about taking care of the kiddos but we're also forgetting that a lot of people in the workplace are taking care of Elders um and so we need to really back to that whole person understand that schedule that they need to meet their needs if you don't have the conversation with them then you don't know what's going on in their life you can't help support their boundaries and you'll create boundaries for them that aren't Fair two things I saw a really interesting email signature one time I believe it was on LinkedIn where the CEO sent a late night email right which a lot of people say you should not do but the email signature said hey sometimes life gets in the way

[21:56]  and I got to this email when I could so this is when I'm responding to it because I had the opportunity to do so I don't expect you to respond to this email at the same time in which I sent it I thought that that was a really interesting kind of message from a leader who's setting the tone for an organization of like hey guys sometimes life gets in the way and I have to respond to this email at 10 10 p.m. at night time but I don't expect you to do so I've been trying to implement that a little bit more um just because we never know like life gets Lifey sometimes and it can be very challenging but one the second thing I wanted to talk about here was in order for people to first of all understand that there's flexibility life gets Lifey sometimes leaders also have to have a foundation of trust in their team members I've talked to so many leaders in the HR space and CEOs alone who often say I have a really tough time trusting my team because they're at home

[22:44]  it's a Friday how do I know what they're doing we don't have like a tracking management system how do I know they're getting their work done what would you say to a leader who has that instant lack of trust for their team when they're working in a setting like this well the first thing I would say to them is are they getting business done because I don't care if it took them 30 hours or if it took them 40 hours if they took care of the customer and they got the business done that's where I My Success is right that's what I'm looking for and I know for some organizations that means some weeks you're going to work 45 and 50 hours and then the next week you're going to work 35 but sometimes we get caught up in in those checking the hours and checking the boxes and we don't look at the fin results and we should be looking at the

[23:31]  final results I tell my team all of the time if you can get your work done in 35 hours take Friday afternoon off I'm good with that and I think leaders need to start thinking about that where we struggle Keenan is in organizations where there's an hourly Workforce that's on the clock right and then you've got a part of the workforce that has this bigger flexibility and we struggle with that Dynamic of how can we allow flexibility over here when our hourly staff doesn't have the same flexibility and I think culturally then they have to think about what their Foundation is um I have a I have a partner at a business that was very clear with his organization from the very beginning hey we're an on-site company and we

[24:19]  understand if that doesn't work for you we will help you transition we will help you find a job somewhere where it meets your needs so I think knowing who you are as an organization and being upfront about that and real about that is critical so it is okay to take a stance in what you want the culture of your organization to be as a leader I haven't really thought about that perspective but yeah sometimes you do have to put your foot down and say hey guys this is how we do things here if this isn't a good fit for you we can help you find somewhere else but that we will find other people who want to work this way as well which is an interesting dichotomy I think about years ago um I don't know if they still do it today but they would literally pay people to leave and what they did was with their new hires if you came in and you didn't

[25:08]  fit like you didn't like the job or you didn't fit into the culture they you didn't like the culture they would give you a bonus to leave so that that would help you transition to find a job where you were a better fit they didn't have a ton of people taking it on because they did a great job hiring and they had a great onboarding process but the message was our cult culture is what it is and we're not shifting that culture and I think we just have to be real about that every business has a culture whether you're purposeful about it or not how do how do we build a a culture of healthy and happy team members especially when they're in this work or this remote work world because one of the biggest challenges that I face is it's so easy for me to get in my mode and get locked into my processes every single day that social engagement often comes as a super late secondary or a tertiary priority

[25:57]  for me but I also recognize that I'm a human being and spending so much time in this workspace by myself isolated very transparently is a real toll on my mental health so how do we kind of create that mix of remote work and the importance for social engagement what's your two cents on this yeah I um I am very worried about the isolation Factor that's going on um I you know I really do believe that's impacting mental health and people aren't really understanding that because when you struggle the first thing you want to do is isolate but that's the worst thing for you to do is to isolate it just feels easier to do right because it's a struggle to want to go out with people but I you know I'm a firm believer of um we jokingly said back in the pandemic

[26:46]  everybody was like oh let's have a virtual happy hour and things of that nature I don't see the problem with that if you have a company that's 100% virtual you still have to interact and then I think it's also important for people to continue to have a social life and um and if you're not doing that that isolation is just so dangerous I just worry about people a lot that way how do you kind of carve up your work life your social life and your personal space of my of me time do you have like an equation that you try and really like hit on throughout the year or throughout the week what does that look like for you oh Kanan it is um and my team knows it is like and my friends know I have a very kind of structured schedule I guess

[27:33]  in some ways and it's something I protect I'm up early I'm an early morning person so I don't recommend it for everybody but I'm up between 4 and 4:30 I spend a fair amount of time reading my Bible journaling praying exercising all of those things that self-care piece that's important to me that comes before I start anything else and then I start my day I start my work and then I you know my husband and I try we don't have kids so we try to have a set dinner time every night and then if I have to slip back into the office I slip back into the office to do a little bit of work but I try to make sure that that friend time that time with my husband the time for myself gets on my to-do list first yeah how do you feel go ahead I

[28:24]  was going to say how do you feel when you don't get that me time first this is a personal struggle that I went through for a long time my schedule these days is literally like 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. I'm doing a lot of these podcasts and things like that and I said to myself I don't have to take care of myself because I'm getting the business results but then I found that when I woke up first thing in the morning and I'm serving other people before myself I wasn't prioritizing my own peace and that distance that I need to create from work so how do you feel when you don't have that personal time or was there a time when you really struggled with it oh definitely I'll even have I'll even have days now where much as I protect it it'll slip right and it I'm off the reality is I'm just off that day um I feel behind I feel um like I'm not fully me because I didn't have that time to

[29:14]  engage myself um and I train I train leaders on self-care and I know that sounds crazy but I do train leaders on what it means to do self-care and I and I say all of the time is not a bble bath that's not chocolate that's not a glass of wine right those all sound good and there's a place for them oh yeah but but self-care is really carving out that time where you are focused on you whether it's time with friends whether it's exercising whatever it looks like for you that's putting back into your bucket heard an amazing quote uh earlier in the week it said in order to lead others you first must learn how to lead yourself and often that means serving yourself first in the day um um how did you kind of start creeping back towards that 4:00 a.m. 4:30 wakeup time was you

[30:02]  have you always been an early riser I've been working on this I get up at 5: 5:15 but I want to push it back to four but I keep struggling in that space yeah you know um I did that I used to travel a ton for work and so when I would travel I'd have to get up early to get to the airport or to drive somewhere and when I stopped traveling I just kept getting up at the same time MH and now it's just you know it's now my routine and my husband helps me protect my going to bedtime right cuz that's the that's the struggle is just if you're getting up between 4 and 4:30 that means you got to get to bed on time because if not I'm cranky no I've been cranky as well yeah I uh I've been getting a lot of flak because I've got this really cool thing on my bed it's called Eight sleep it's like a mattress

[30:49]  cover that Heats and cools theide of individual side of the bed but it also wakes you up with like a vibration and stuff like that and you can also track your sleep score and I was looking at my girlfriend's sleep score over the last month and she goes to bed on average about 11:30 12:00 midnight cuz she's in PA school right now and I'm falling asleep on average between 8:40 and 910 and so I was talking to her I was like it's so crazy to think about how we're getting the same amount of sleep but I'm going to bed 3 hours ahead of you and I'm also Waking Up 3 hours ahead of you and she was like this is just how my cycle works right now and I just want to try and push her back towards those earlier bed times because not a lot of stuff happens at night time that we need to be for you know what I mean unless it's surfing on social media and things like that yeah the only thing I will say is my husband and I have been married 33 years and then there is a time where um

[31:40]  I have my me time in the morning and his me time is at night and and so we're just you know and that's it works well for us and and I so he's up until 11 o'clock at night and not getting up till 6 and I've been you know I I jokingly say by the time he's up and going I'm ready for lunch but but it works right and and there is that me time but um that everybody has to have and where wherever that works for them you got to put it into the schedule and make it a priority comes back to that work life Harmony right we have to find it for ourselves and it kind of is the perfect thing for us to say I want to transition here a little bit into kind of an Innovative and creative thought space HR adoption of technology is not exactly on the

[32:30]  adoption front end of a bell curve right especially when we talk about things like Ai and Innovative technology how are you kind of looking at things like artificial intelligence impacting the space of HR today and what are some of the challenges maybe that we have for Mass adoption yeah you know um I think HR is playing a couple of different roles here the first role HR should be playing is the first um the first kind of adopter of it like let's start using it so that the business sees the use of it and and and show that there's worthiness and there's um there's Security in it because people are just afraid of it Keenan I'm just going to be like I talk to people and we do a lot of AI education at true you and people are just afraid of it they don't understand

[33:20]  it they are afraid that their work is going to get out and all the things right and so I just encourage people to start with simple things um one of my team members did a training session for our team and you know what he had him do he had him build their travel itinerary for an upcoming vacation I love that and everybody was like oh my God this is perfect right and so if you start with something that's as simple as that but shows you the power of it you get more comfortable with it and then you can start using it and I just think HR should be an early adopter in figuring it out um we're a little bit behind on our side but my team's using it like

[34:07]  crazy and we're using it for things Kenan that used to get in our way of being able to do the big strategic things yep and it's removing those barriers to getting to those bigger projects that need to happen because I don't need to be spending my time creating a job description when I can type in some stuff and get a job description or an interview guide or a benefits guide or a Compensation Plan let me do that yeah it's a it's interesting how me being 34 years old now I continue to see or at least for the first time my life I've started to recognize patterns right where we do the same things over and over again I often heard people back in the day say you know why would we ever need the internet right when we have the Yellow Pages and

[34:55]  when you think about those things with a little bit of distance you're like my gosh what were we thinking but then it was you know back even further it was like where are all the jobs going to go for the farmers if we Implement all these tractors or what's going to happen in the manufacturing um in the manufacturing plans for automotive if we bring in all these robots in automation it's just an interesting perspective how we continue to make the same type of humanistic fear-based mistakes about technology that has the ability to transform our lives and I just don't know if we're going to get to the point where people are easily adopting this technology because they are so hesitant to lean into a curious future because there are so many possibilities with this technology if we think in November 1st of 2024 that this artificial intelligence is fully baked we couldn't be more wrong this is like early 2000s hearing like the dialup sound when the

[35:43]  internet was connecting in your house it's going to be crazy to think about have you kind of gone through that down that path of exploring and thinking about what AI could really mean for society in general yeah you know from my perspective um I truly believe is not going to replace people it's going to make life easier and um it's like the remote control right I was the remote control for my dad I got up and walked to the TV and changed that's such a great example oh my gosh but this is the same thing right it's an evolution and um I really believe it's it's going to help us long term with all kind whether it's health related whether's but it's not ultimately going

[36:32]  to replace people here's an example um years ago uh trainers like um leadership trainers were worried that online learning was going to replace them here's the reality there's still a need for for face-to-face training and facilitation it's never they both augment each other the same thing's going to happen with AI can I get a good training deck off of an AI tool absolutely but you can't replace my experience to come in and talk to people and so it makes life easier to get that SL that slide deck put together that training deck to put together the facilitator notes all of the things but you still need me to sit down with

[37:19]  people and have the conversation so I think it's just that's part of it that interaction is going to happen there yeah I'm really excited to see where we go but our leaders of organizations have to lean into that sense of curiosity that soft skill that says hey guys I want you to explore start with your travel itinerary now next time why don't you create a job description and XYZ as it builds on top of itself um me and my team have been heavily leaning into um open Ai and chat gbt since November of 22 but I still have some team members who will literally write me on a weekly basis and say look what I created I didn't even know that this was POS possible and so although we do formal trainings and we get the entire team into like group sessions and things like that everybody's still exploring at their own pace and I guess time just

[38:06]  takes time sometimes and that's kind of a really important lesson for us to lean into as well well think about it this way Kanan apple is what I'll call the front runner right like they typically are first to Market and this comes about and all of the different things and Samsung is typically the fast follower is Samsung still um successful absolutely so it's okay if some people are going to be the fast followers on AI but they're going to have to be the fast followers not the laggers right there was a the CEO of Nvidia the people who make the microchips that go on all the iPhones and all of our computers and things like that said you know the biggest threat to your job is not AI it is someone else who has figured out how to use AI to be

[38:53]  more efficient than you are and so it's like that is a ringing of the Bell and awareness to everybody that you have to be able to adopt these tools because very much like back in the day when my grandma used to say it's really important for you to know how to write incursive and write a checkbook because when you go to the grocery store you're going to have to use this skill for the rest of your life some people started exploring different types of Technology like Banking and all the online credit cards in XYZ and I just think that it's really important to keep that lens of curiosity and how we explore these pieces of Technology moving forward um one other thing that I'm really curious about Chris is the change in language when we talk about human resources I've seen a lot of Chief people officer I've seen dream managers I've seen Chief heart officers all of these things why do you think that we're changing the language and titles of these leaders in our

[39:40]  organizations um I have a couple of thoughts on that I think a a piece of that is human resources which by the way was Personnel when I started three you know 33 years ago um it just has gotten a bad connotation M and so when you think about having a bad reputation what do you tend to do you Rebrand so that's that's one piece I think it's a bit of a rebranding I also believe that books like the dream manager are starting to have an impact in organizations and helping them understand that this is a whole person that works for my company what is a dream manager have you what is a dream manager I actually have a client that

[40:28]  has dream full-time dream managers and they meet with them yes they meet with employees um they help them figure out paths to accomplishing their dream they help them understand what their dreams are whether that's um a vacation they've never taken buying a house that maybe they're going to be the first person in their family to actually own a home and they don't know the path to get there or they want to send their kids to college and they've never been able to do that their dream managers sit down with with them and counsel them and help them find ways to make those dreams come to fruition I feel like I'm experiencing a moment in The Matrix or the secret where you can like manifest an idea there was about a month and a half ago where I was talking to one of my friends we were on a walk together and I said you know wouldn't it be amazing if we found a

[41:16]  world where when you signed up or joined a team an organization right one of the first conversations leadership had with you is what do you want to accomplish in your life do you want to go back for your MBA do you want to go to Europe do you want to have more time with your kids XYZ dream managers are exactly what all leaders should be in organizations to figure out where you want to go through the vehicle of this business that is so cool that's Co have you seen I had to grab it there's actually a book called The Dream manager by Matthew Kelly all right you just added another book to my audible so I'm gonna have to plug this in oh my gosh so so you've read this book what are some of the key things that you took away from this um two things and one is what you just said it is not just about a dedicated position it's great if a company has a dedicated

[42:04]  dream manager leaders can play that role and should play that role so both concepts are really talked about in that book um and it just you know it's powerful to think about the fact it's and it's scary for some people to realize that as a leader you have such impact on your team that's by the way why I when I do leadership training I'm all about self-care because what do leaders end up doing they take and they take and they take and they tend to be the first to break it is impossible for us to pour from an empty cup it is right and we have to be able to fill our own cup and what do they say I mean let's steal from the from the

[42:51]  airlines you put the oxygen mask on yourself first I mean it's an old saying but it is still true today man but don't you think some of us feel guilty for treating ourselves like we treat others you know oh yeah there's we could go into all kinds of discussion about that maybe my therapist and I have actually talked a little bit about that Kenan you do feel guilty I feel guilty you know it's u i I have to be very transparent you know one of the some of the most emotional moments that I have um for my personal relationships or for my team is when I am acknowledged without there being like a milestone that I've accomplished there's been a

[43:38]  couple times where I have like a whiteboard in here and this is going to sound interesting but everybody deserves to hear this um I walked into my office one morning and I'm literally just like grinding for weeks at a time right and I've been in my own zone I'm talking to team members I'm doing sales I'm doing all this different type of stuff but there was a note that was on my my whiteboard when day and my girlfriend said I never get to tell you enough but I'm incredibly proud of you I see how hard you work all the time just know that I see you and I don't know what it was but in that moment balling literally started crying because often as a leader of an organization we feel like we don't deserve or I personally feel like I don't deserve the recognition because this is my job I'm supposed to show up and help everybody else but just feeling that sense of recognition is so Soul feeling you know it is it is and um um and I'm drawing a blank I wish I had it

[44:29]  on the top of my my head at the moment I know um a group that that is like they are putting out there trying to help leaders understand the importance of recognizing each other right um I am all about I'm an old soul so I'm all about handwritten notes I think they're impactful and people hold on to them and there're and it and why is important is it's so easy to pick up the phone it's so easy to type an email it's so easy to but to take a moment and actually think about what you want to write on a Post-It note or what you want to write in a card that means that person paused and that's why it's so important and you know I think the hard part is

[45:18]  Kenan as leader sometimes um we don't receive it so we don't give it have you ever had um in this journey right 33 years years now have you ever had any type of feelings of like impostor syndrome as you've been building these businesses and taking on so much responsibility through this journey oh I might have that right now Canan I'm like I'm a president what does that mean am I am I ready for this is the business ready for this do I have the skills to be a president I'm a great operations person but now you know and I I was I got I got myself a coach um because I felt like I needed somebody that could chenged me a little bit um and one of the things that she said to me was be careful because we're so used to um getting our worth from

[46:06]  checking things off and now as a president I'm going to be not checking so many things off it's going to be about strategy it's going to be about conversations and I'm sitting here even though my bracelet says worthy I'm still wondering whether or not that's actually true I have so much confidence in your ability to navigate this next chapter of your career even though it comes with the title right I think that you have so many opportunities to lean into what you said in the very beginning of this conversation was you said it might sound a little selfish right but I love pouring into others I love being able to make that human connection and helping people kind of be their best self um I'm so excited for what this next chapter is going to mean for you when you think about the vision over the next let's say three to five years what are you thinking about what kind where are you

[46:53]  guys going to go oh goodness um well I wish I could share it but pay attention soon in the next few months we've got some rebranding happening that we're pretty excited about um so that is a short-term piece but in the long term um we feel like we can go National we're pretty much right now in Indianapolis but we do have some clients that are National we feel like we can have an impact nationally we feel like there are other services we don't offer today so we're all into acquisition mode and what does that look like um and then at the end of the day there's just some things that we're noodling on that say what are programs that we can be offering to help people be their best

[47:42]  selves and it's not just about being a better leader it's about being a better person and so and in my vision and my dream people come to true you and they go through a session that helps them with some of that dream management that you've been talking about right and and the better and helping them be their best sell well we're incredibly excited to follow along with this journey Chris you know we can check in in a couple years and come back to the show and say Hey listen remember when we talked back in 2024 about all this stuff like look what's happened since you know one of the Traditions that we have here on the podcast as we put the landing gear down is our previous guest wanted to ask you a blind question their question is if you had a magic wand hold on I'm sorry I'm gonna have to say

[48:29]  that again if you had a magic okay if you had a magic wand with one wish what would it be I know exactly what it would be so um whether you're where wherever you are in your spiritual realm for me in the Bible there is a verse and the verse goes something like this I will praise thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully made my wish would be that every body realizes they are fearfully and wonderfully made exactly as they are that's my wish that's incredibly powerful well Chris Mills can't thank you enough for being the definition of heart and hustle I can't thank you enough for everybody who tuned in watched and listened to this episode really appreciate you coming on the show

[49:15]  it's been an absolute honor Kon thanks for having me on it's been great