The Secret to Building a High-Performing Team

[0:00]  brought up that authentic self and I was hoping that term would come up because I spent I'm not a normal CEO I don't even even like that word I don't even think that's right we have staff meetings and we cry and we talk about our lives and they're hard and I think like and I'm I'm emotional and I have feelings and I have opinions and I have passions and I care about other people and that's what we do I've been told in previous positions um that that this isn't going to to get you to where if you don't learn how to I once spent my own you know companies give you money on your your professional development because when I got really passionate about a client or about a kiddo that I was working with or about his family you knew it and I showed and and I was I look back at that and I'm like that was

[0:48]  my superpower I tried to shut I spent years shutting down authentically who I was to fit some mold of a leader that I no I need to be exactly who I am take or leave it and do some of my staff think I'm crazy yeah but would they would they still put me in charge yeah all right guys welcome back to a brand new episode the heart and hustle podcast I sitting across from an amazing leader here today Elizabeth Matthews is joining the show now she is the CEO and founder of EMG Consulting now in our conversation today we're going to be

[1:35]  talking about the landscape of ABA Services we're going to talk about personal growth in leadership we're going to talk about hopefully an amazing tattoo that she has which kind of embodies the element of evolution in her personal growth Journey we're going to talk about Innovation and we're also going to talk about building Community here Elizabeth welcome to the show thank you thank you so much I'm excited to be here so I think it's appropriate for us to kind of start off this journey um in our previous conversation you said you created or you had an amazing accomplishment of becoming certified at the age of 12 when you were trying to take on this journey so why don't we talk a little bit about kind of your journey to being the amazing person who sits across from me here today it was I wanted to maintain um and actually I'm maintaining 29 as my age so I guess having been

[2:23]  certified for almost 20 years that would put me around nine actually not not 12 nine years old maybe my fault my fault um um yeah yeah so um I've been a board certified behavior analyst for almost two decades um and I've been a part of the field as it has grown um in the last two decades um substantially so what so why did you why were you passionate about getting into this work the one thing that we recognize is that ABA in itself has grown I had another guest on the podcast named Porsche James her episode's going to be dropping she's a CEO and founder out of California and she said over the recent years we've seen a 5 100% growth in this space why are we seeing such tremendous growth here um we tached a little bit on this when we chatted before too um I think it's a combination of

[3:11]  awareness um you know we're we're actually giving people labels on their diagnosis now and I think a lot of that has been shifted into the classification of autism which is a which is a diagnosis that um Behavior Analysis specifically is mostly associated with um and let me be clear ABA covers a lot um ABA is a behavior science um it just is commonly associated with autism but people work with a lot of different populations um there um so again I think I think there's getting more clarity on di diagnosis um more support more resources um and I think that's what's what's contributing a lot to the to the growth yeah I mean just me kind of

[3:59]  organically spending time and supporting different organizations I realized that when I first got into the space in 2017 2018 it was one in 56 children were being diagnosed with autism specifically as of 2024 and recording this it was one in 36 children so we're seeing a incredible growth in diagnosis meaning that there are more and more people in our communities who are needing support in services not just the individual clients and patients but their families as well and something that you had mentioned in our previous conversation was I asked how are you going to hire your way out of this Challenge and you very succinctly said we are not trying to hire our way out of this Challenge and in order to think big sometimes we have to start by thinking small so what did that mean I think part of the answer to um that that growth within the within

[4:47]  the diagnosis was to how how can we fastest way that we can get more providers more services more stuff out there and everybody knows and this isn't this isn't specific to the field of Behavior Analysis but everyone knows that when you have large amounts of growth typically there's a quality component that usually suffers with that um so as we push to kind of fill that void of services um you can't maintain you can't keep all the balls in the air all all the time all at once so commonly um Quality you see it sometimes suffer and everything so it's a it's a real difficulty to deliver and meet the need while trying to maintain quality and the best providers um struggle with that on a regular basis but at the end of the day when I look at my values for me um

[5:38]  being a private business um it I get I get to choose I get to choose what we're going to pick and we are choosing quality over quantity every time I mean do we we work to grow we do but we have a platform within our organization um as we make changes it's change and pause and we make sure everything is still the same are we still delivering the same quality of services I'll be honest recently we've done a little bit of analysis and we've realized that we we have some hiccups going on um but what we're going to do is we're going to pause we're going to take a step back we're going to analyze those things and we're going to make sure that we get things back to where we expect them to be before we move forward this is a huge trap that a lot of Founders CEOs find themselves falling trapped to which is

[6:26]  growth at all costs but the thing that we recognize is when we're serving Community we have a reputation to be able to maintain and so how did you kind of come to the settled mindset of we are going to grow but at the necessary Pace to do good work how did you kind of come to that balance I I think I I owe it to you and to your listeners to to be honest and like I'm not going to become a billionaire like it's not about the money for me it's a it's about a quality contribution to my field and to the families that I work with um yeah I mean could I just keep building this and building this and building this and sell the organization um to a different place yeah I have that option we get phone calls every day but like that's not how am I going to sleep at night like that's not who I am and so I stay true to like my core values who I am who what what

[7:14]  type of do I pay my staff the biggest and the best do they have all the benefits and all the pay and all the best no they don't they don't but they stay um I know that you've had other um presentations that you've done about what employees really need and what do they really want and um I've recently been involved in some research and it doesn't really come down to the dollar signs it comes down to appreciation it comes down to company culture it comes down to there's a lot of things that I can offer them that mean just as much to them as a couple extra you know dollar signs um so I think that's that's what I lost in that um but I'm fine with it I sleep well at night and this is what it's all about you know I had a mentor one time ask me Keenan how small is big enough because often I think we find ourselves

[8:01]  falling trapped to this mental game of I have to grow I have to be this big I have to be the gorilla in the room but often when it comes to making truly impactful moments in people's lives it means doing the right work and sometimes extending our time Horizon and thinking about how long we're going to be doing this work is a great way to kind of be grounded in the process that this is going to take some time but that element of patience is something that it seems like we've lost my company right now is the best that it has ever been it is in the best place with the best people I wouldn't change a thing we are right now 33% smaller than we were at our largest and I wouldn't change a thing what are some of the things you've been able to do because you've been a little bit smaller in size which is an interesting conversation we've never had on the

[8:48]  podcast here um I think it's when being smaller is everyone knows everybody so when we have a problem or we need something you know we have forms of communication where we can reach out to everyone in our organization and I have 20s something clinicians at my exposure that that I can just be like hey who knows about this who knows about sleep who knows about eating who's done this program um so and everyone's willing to jump in and help everybody um I don't have to put pressures on um like I said if we were larger and if we were governed differently um by you know Financial situations and stuff we wouldn't have the option of not

[9:35]  meeting certain Financial or growth expectations um I think that's the biggest thing is that we're allowed to set our expectations um of where we want to be and if you're not ready to have a full case load and work and and go do all the things I don't have any pressure to push you to be there I can say hey let's let's take back and you know what I think the answer is training we have the space to do training as needed and that's how we maintain the quality so I don't know if you tricked me into this but I can see the whole pattern like everything is all the dots are connecting I don't know if that was you or me but it's like yeah it all comes full the training and the quality and the control of your own growth and doing it at your own pace based on all of those factors is what's going to really get quality services to people which is

[10:23]  what people really really really want and what they really need yeah there's a there was a study that I came AC across one time and it was talking about the difference between Neutrogena you know the hair product line or company and crypto.com and so I want to kind of get your a little two cents on this analogy crypto.com 4,000 employees a billion in Revenue okay average tenure in the organization 1.2 years okay now Neutrogena 4 billion in Revenue with 750 employees average tenure two 10.2 years what do you think is going on in that company culture and why do you think a smaller team can produce such outrageous results compared to that fast-pace environment of crypto.com with

[11:10]  four times the employees but a quarter of the revenue it's funny that you asked that I was recently involved on a research team that um uh did some work in this space and what we did for lack of a better term we're we're we're working on the language but we called it burnout um we're worried about the term burnout because it places the onus of the feelings on the victim like on the person that was impacted um but we really need to place it on the employers and everything and um in what we did is and again another area sometimes lacking in Behavior Analysis we focus really really really hard on quantitative data um in this study that I was a part of they did everyone did a great job but we got a lot of qualitative dat so we got a

[11:58]  lot of answers we went out and we we didn't just count how many people do we said why' you quit what happened what went wrong we said what would have made you stay I think was the biggest answers we got um there's a little doggy in the background sorry there yeah no this little that's Lucy she's hanging out for dogs so again that's that's an important thing so we pause for dogs um but but what we did is when we got answers and again like circling back to this is what people said company culture ethics and they said what would you have stayed for more money no would you have stayed if if they had better values yeah um so I mean you can either lean in to why people leave you which I think if you do the analysis and if you do the research turnover costs organizations I wish I had the numbers on that because I know

[12:45]  they're there it's gonna you're going to invest more in your turnover than you are going to have to invest into your current people so invest in your people I was having a conversation yesterday with a global ch J who's worked for GE and Airbus and Boeing and all these different companies and we talked about the concept of employees don't leave their job they often leave their manager so why do you think so many people are leaving Bad Bosses in droves like we've seen over the last couple years when it comes to the great resignation and everything else like that is it just terrible leadership I mean that's probably part of it um we didn't have and people didn't have options um I think when what our country what our whole world went through a few years ago um with the

[13:32]  pandemic um I think we learned that there was room for shift there was room for change there was room for different ways to do things um not everything was binary not everything was one way or the other um so I think that and wait we have to go back what was the original question I I was going somewhere with this so what we were talking about was you know during the pandemic so many people started leaving and I was having a conversation with leader and he was saying people leave jobs not managers or managers not jobs yeah and I I think it was that um as people people started talking more and they started sharing more and they started we had no choice but to survive some really dark years by really having some conversations with

[14:20]  each other and doing things differently we weren't going to get through that as a as an employer like I wasn't going to get through that by being tough and hard and mean go out and do work and nobody I needed like when somebody stopped and said I need to stop and have a moment because today was hard because it was scared because this happened and this happened and this happened and it's it's having managers that listen and take into consideration what people are actually saying and what happens is those managers have to be able to have a space to be able to say okay I have resources and options and you need them right now and I'm going to get them for you but they need that support from the top too so I'm talking about middle management being able to have access to what they need to being able to support everyone how they need it and that

[15:07]  coming from that's got got to come from the top down I think we've seen a lot of personal development really become something that a lot of people are focusing on not just employees but also leaders in their process because what got us here is not going to get us there I want to talk a little bit about your personal growth as a leader as you've kind of been building this amazing organization how do you think you've changed over the last couple years and what are some lessons that you've had to kind of learn the hard way maybe um well so as you know um about F six oh my gosh I guess it's six years ago six years ago um I had my son and um I I don't fail at anything I'll tell you what I failed at I just failed at thriving as a human after I had a child nobody told me how hard that was

[15:54]  going to be nobody told me how like and I wasn't I wasn't I was in embarrassed um about about what that space was going into so um and it was really hard I wanted to stay home I wanted to struggle I wanted to be alone I didn't want to go out and again I was raising a small child in a pandemic it was as I mentioned to you before my husband is a veteran um and at that time he was not stationed in the same place where my son and I lived so I was flying solo um I I mean and he was coming home and doing everything that he could he'd come home every weekend and wash our laundry and get our food and then he'd leave and I'd go back to work the next week and um but I went through some dark times and I had to make a choice um I can either I was in my 30s and I was like I can either

[16:42]  keep doing this like this this is my skill this is what I do I've been a behavior analyst for 15 years how am I going to make it to retirement um or or I've got someone's got to do something and I looked around and there was nobody there but my baby and my dogs and I said it's me so I found spaces with like-minded people that were feeling the same way I wasn't alone there was so many other folks out there like moms and women and behavior behaviorists and business owners and everyone was struggling and everyone wanted to see everybody treating everybody differently and everybody wanted to learn how to be kinder to themselves and kinder to those around them because we all needed so much of that um so I reached out to those groups

[17:29]  I got involved with people um I took a couple courses um and found some space online and it gave me it and like I said I well we talk so my T my tattoo says evolve um and that was because and that was what I did I could either just stay where I was or I could choose to learn other things um I never in a million years thought that would end with i I've been a behavior for very a behavior analyst for a very very very long time I'm a very committed to the science of behavior it has changed a lot if you told me 10 years ago that I would go back to school someday for something other than Behavior Analysis I'd be like no no that's who I am through and through I'm a clinician um and then after these kind of years of evolving and everything I

[18:16]  realized that my passion was really for supporting people and Leadership and um when I ended up going back to school that's what I went back for was educational leadership um with a concentration in equity and and it's to I it was the most right decision I ever made and had I not gone through those tough times and realized like there's more out there for me there's a I'm meant for more there's it don't be afraid to explore those other spaces um because I didn't I didn't know anything about leadership I just um but I went I went and I found out and thank goodness I feel like this is a very beautiful area for us to dig a little bit deeper in you know when I think about the life that we want to create for ourselves often we have to adapt new skill sets and new things that we can

[19:06]  put into our superhero belt right and often the highest form of leadership or the highest form of Leverage if you will is leadership being able to lean into others being able to encourage others being able to cast a vision so large that other people can find themselves being successful in our own Vision how do you think about your ability to cast a vision that is so great that youve been able to attract highly talented people to be able to work in your organization do you ever get to like kind of sit in that form of gratitude that this was a skill set you didn't have but now you have it and it's been able to kind of pay tenfold for you yeah um a very close friend of mine um a couple years ago she was the president of our state organization and I'd taken a large group of of staff and clinicians that I work with to a conference and

[19:55]  they were all sitting around the table and um she came over and she stood next to me and she said I just want you to know that the diversity within your organization is beautiful and I was like At first I felt really weird and I was like and again this so I mean it was probably more than two it was probably I want maybe four or five years ago um so when we're start first leaning into the words like diversity and equity and inclusion and everything and I was like and I was like well I can't take credit for like you know what my my folks are to the table or like everything and I'm like H and I went home and I talked with one of my closest friends who also works with me um and I said you know like Amanda said this to me and and I like I said thank you but like I felt really

[20:43]  awkward about it and she's like why and I'm like because like I didn't do that and she said and this was hard because imposters we don't want to take credit especially as a woman like I have a hard time taking credit and I'm I don't I don't I'm the first thing I think of is not like I did that that's that's not the it's the last thing I think of um but she said to me she said you made a space you made a space for people to feel safe and to do their jobs and to feel comfortable and to have someone that was going to support them in whatever they decided to do um and I'm still working on it and I'm still I look at my the group of people I work with and they are they are beautiful and they are amazing and they impress me every single day and I still am not I don't think I'll ever I'm glad I created a

[21:30]  space for them but like I'm still struggling with taking any credit for that but I mean damn it it is really tough as a founder and a CEO to be able to take credit for the things that are worthy of taking credit for you know I think we spend so much time pouring into others lifting other people up that we are the last person at the end of the day who we're trying to pour into our cup but our c is our cup is empty and we're like I just don't understand why I can't give myself the same sense of gratitude and appreciation that I give to everybody else and maybe this is kind of part of that secret sauce as why being a founder and a CEO and a leader is so difficult because we're always handing out our best tools to other people rather than establishing the boundaries that it's okay to serve ourselves sometimes which is a skill set we have to build but we're so bad at it yeah it is like um I mean like I said I

[22:20]  I I struggled a few years back and when I decided just to like get it to let like let me do like the world has always said you know you can't have everything you can't have everything and I was like I can't I can't this is it this is as good as it gets da I'm just going to struggle I own this organization I'm just going to struggle through for the next 20 years it's G to be fine and I had that flip of that switch and I said hold my root beer and I said wait I'mma have it all I'mma Do It All I'm gonna I'm gonna experience everything I'm gonna do everything I am and we keep talking about the term like CEO um and there's a book and I can't quote it and I need to send it to you but there's um it's the idea of CEOs are they have titles as as Visionaries and that that is really what we are and I'm I'm really

[23:09]  trying to lean into that space because I am very very very fortunate that I my Chief Operating Officer um she is they also there's also like um there's a title for them and they're basically the people that make it happen so I come up she gives me the comfort and the boundaries to have the space to come up with these great big ideas and I'm like hey you guys we're going to do this and this and this and it's going to be glorious and great and she's like okay okay and she listens and she she doesn't tell me no she listens and she tells me when I'm crazy and she tells me when I'm not and and um and then she says okay all right keep giving me more keep giving me more and let me figure out how we're going to make this happen and all I've got to do so I think to be a

[23:58]  visionary and to lean into that feeling of doing that because it's so beautiful when you do and for me to feel comfortable being hey guys I got this idea and having a group of people that says we want to listen that's that's what's been so big for me and she takes me seriously and she believes in me um and she gives me the space to do that have you ever had trouble relinquishing some of the control of the organization to the team members who you trust I talked to a lot of CEO on this call and part of the maturation process is recognizing that our objective is to cast The Vision but it's also to get people in the organization that can execute on our vision and often when we first start out building our businesses we think we need to do everything the administrative we need to do the training we need to do

[24:45]  everything right but one of the things that I found in a book that I'm reading right now it's called um buy your time back by Dan Martell he talks about the 8020 principle he says you know if you can find somebody who can do 80 % as good of a job that you can that is 100% awesome that 80 plus 20 is 100% great and a lot of leaders struggle with that process of relinquishing and delegating these tasks to team members so we can be in our place of genius and casting that Vision did you ever struggle with that oh yeah like that was probably one of my biggest barriers I still do everything I still do so many things like I am still doing so many administrative tasks that if some of the people within my organ like I said Jamie my coo if she knew some of the secret things tests that I'm hoarding over here because I'm still controlling them she'd be like no no Liz

[25:34]  you need to you need to give those away um but it's really really scary but I wouldn't even I'd go even farther than finding someone who I my the biggest thing I've done is I hire people that are better than me I hire people that are smarter than me and then I my superpower is support and strength and resources but I I really like people that are better at everything that I am um because that's I mean you can see how that would work out great um do you have a story about when you hired somebody who was better than you and how it kind of like maybe broke that mindset of like I'm going to be the best person here what was that like um it it was freeing because you realize like I said

[26:22]  we just we've gone through a lot of growth in the last two years specifically because it took me a minute to get my act together and then I said okay I can't keep doing this like this we got it evolved and then I started bringing in some other people and relinquishing some some control and it was like I think the biggest thing is that I have been at the bottom of this pile of stress and errors and fear and mistakes and what if this happens and what if this happens it's all going to come back on me but it was when I've built a team that's supporting me of amazing smart beautiful people and if something happens they're all going to have my back they're all going to be sitting right here in my house computers open figuring it out I'm not alone I'm

[27:12]  surround surrounded by people smarter than me who are going to save my my tail um when that happen so yeah so it's freeing because you're safe and that's that's a a lot of the way I feel now you know one thing that I recognize you've talked about a couple times is we've created a safe space one of the things that you were incredibly proud of was that 95% of your staff is women you've created a safe space for women to be able to be excellent at what they do why is that something that you're so proud of and why is that maybe something that a lot of people don't do in their organizations why is that important to you one of the biggest things is that a majority of people in Behavior Analysis are are women um it's like I think it's like 80 something percent um are women so you got to get get comfortable with them um but a lot of times when you look

[28:00]  at a lot of the large organizations um all filled with women but the group at the top are not women so um you know we're still finding those spaces occupied um by by certain populations and I just was like how how is this happening um and what it is is that people were struggling with child care and flexibility and so again I love this how these things keep coming full circle is that during the pandemic we got flexible we had to learn different ways to do things so a lot of that for me was like holy cow this is going to work if I keep working with this model this is going to work for working I hate the term working mom working

[28:50]  parents um and but mostly um um women I needed to create a way logistically a way for them to be able to maintain their duties outside of their job that they wanted to to to keep as mothers as caregivers as friends um we are really TR we are really true to those um and and allowing people flexibility to you can again you can have it all and let me let me try to figure out a way to do that um we have a we have a situation in our company right now where when certain certain staff go on maternity leave I don't have a way to fill their spot so what we do is that we are

[29:37]  transparent with our clients and with the whole situation said Hey listen this is what's going to happen I don't have options because we're not built that way and this is why we're not built that way because your provide your clinician is excellent and I don't have a lot of those sitting in my back pocket so I can't just give you another one so how let's talk about what our options are we can we can move you we can do this I can give you the timeline we can look at all this and pretty much I I can't think of a situation where they said oh yeah we're just going to go find someone else they said no let this person go do what they have to do and take care of their family we'll be here when they get back and I don't feel like families should have to support us in that um but they do um the other key thing was Finding

[30:25]  Financial Resources for again when 90% of your organization is female um you there's no Government funding for people to have maternity leave there's no rules for small organizations there's no resources for that so figuring out options and stuff um allowed me to like really take into consideration um I'm going to say another C I'm going to say a crazy thing to one of the other things we're doing is that women go through different things when they become middle-aged um no one talks about that uh I don't know if you you talk about it here but there's like certain experiences that you go through halfway through your your your age and everything changes um but you know what we do we talk about it I feel tired I feel sleepy I feel crazy I

[31:15]  feel this I feel that this is a safe space if you have a day that you just don't feel right that's all I got to know is that you just don't feel right okay uh let's figure let's figure that out um but again so we give them the space to to be who their authentic selves show up as you are and we'll take care of you you know there's a a theory that I talk about a lot on the podcast which is in 2022 the uh Surgeon General came onto a national broadcast and talked about the biggest threat to the American society was not another viral pandemic but an epidemic of isolation and loneliness now I feel like deep down in my heart from having these conversations and just looking around at everybody that we are yearning deep down inside of us for the sense of connection that we are not getting from our

[32:02]  personal lives and maybe work is filling that and so when I hear you as a leader of your organization talking about you're willing to sit here and protect a space where people can show up as they are what other areas of Our Lives do we really receive that in and I don't know if you really recognize that but your clients and your patients and their families are willing to work with you because they see how you are taking care of their team and people want to do work with people who they like and they admire and that's you've been able to accomplish just by being who you are as a leader that's a huge accomplishment Elizabeth thank you I I I really really appreciate that um I think two things that come to mind for me are on the flip side our expectations are high we're going to provide that space but you're also going to give me 110% except for the days that you can't but on the days you can but I think I spent a lot of

[32:50]  time you brought up that authentic self and I was hoping that term would come up because I spent I'm not a normal CEO I don't even even like that word I don't even think that's right um um because I we have staff meetings and we cry and we talk about our lives and they're hard and I said listen guys I'm not on my game today I have 109 emails in my inbox that usually has zero I'm super freaking out about it I'm I'm my kid is bothering me my spouse is bothering me um but I and you that not that is not CEO Behavior you do not show up and you're like I am the hot mess Express like but I do I do um and I think like and I'm I'm emotional and I have feelings and I

[33:39]  have opinions and I have passions and I care about other people and that's what we do and like that's authentically who I am who's it's always been frowned upon I've been told in previous positions um that that this isn't going to get you to where if you don't learn how to I once spent my own you know companies give you money on your your professional development I used my professional development once to buy a CD ROM that was how to control your emotions at work because when I got really passionate about a client or about a kiddo that I was working with or about his family you knew it and I showed and and I was I look back at that and I'm like that was my superpower I tried to shut I spent years shutting down authentically who I was to fit some mold

[34:28]  of a leader that I no I need to be exactly who I am take take it or leave it and do some of my staff think I'm crazy yeah but would they would they still put me in charge yeah so I mean there's no better feeling than creating a space for yourself to show up as you truly are you know one of the things that I always hear um from some of the guests who are going to come on the show it's like hey what should I be dressed in right should I have like a button up S or shoot and should I have like a tie on I'm like guys I'm going show up with a black T-shirt and a Francis hat on so I'm showing up as me so you just show up as yourself and I feel like often we are trying to cram ourselves into these preconstructed holes that society says who we should be and there's no worse feeling than going through life obtaining the life that you thought was going to make you happy but

[35:16]  it doesn't fulfill you how many times are we going to make that mistake over and over again yeah I mean I think I'm fortunate to have a partner who he so so he like my coo is like I come up with these wacky ideas and he's like okay all right how are we gonna make this happen I mean um so I think it's surrounding yourself but again in work and in my personal life I have people that we're comfortable enough with each other and it goes both ways to give each other boundaries um or to have the discussions and sometimes if they pull me back and they're like let's talk about how this is going to actually play out and I'm like okay and I start talking about it and sometimes I'll realize myself like

[36:04]  I'll start talking and be like okay okay let me let me get back to you because maybe this wasn't the greatest idea but I'm come back with a better one so yeah surround yourself with people that give you that space what I think about in that is that is the highest form of compassion you know often when we think about levels of compassion I had a CEO on the podcast a couple weeks ago his name was Gino he's out a uh Connecticut I believe and he said you know we have to show up with the highest form of compassion if you think about a daughter or a son or somebody who you truly love the highest form of compassion is holding them accountable and challenging their ideas so we can actually make things happen a low form of compassion is like okay Elizabeth like that sounds like a pretty crazy idea we're going to make that happen with no intention to challenge your ideas and kind of get you

[36:50]  refocused and I love the fact that we're talking about that high form of compassion because we need more of that in life and in business in general I have um somebody that I'm working with right now and she has asked me to challenge her more and I'm doing that and you know what she didn't like it she didn't like it at all so we do it and I pull and I hear her and I I I pull back and then I say okay you want to keep doing this what do you want to do and she's like I I still let's let's keep doing it keep let's Circle back I just I need to be patient and listen and give her time and space to go through the process of figuring out is this what you really want this is a concept I talk about in the podcast I'm still working through

[37:39]  this so I hope that you are okay with being like an experiment here but I called this the instant gratification trap of leadership when we think about instant gratification we often think of a younger generation in a little bit of judgment but often as Leaders we need to be patient enough to give our team the opportunity to grow fail so they can truly understand why they're not getting the results that they want and at the end of the day that person becomes more valuable to us as a leader but often we don't have that patience to be able to let them run and fail like a CH like a kid if you will and sometimes that is the demise of our organization and our overall leadership strategy one of the things that I learned when I stepped back from that micromanagement style as I stepped back you don't then you don't know all the mistakes nobody knows all I make so

[38:27]  many mist mistakes every day and you know what because I'm in the position I'm in nobody ever finds out but I screw things up every single day U I'm just fortunate um but unfortunately when some of people in my organization make mistakes sometimes I find out and we have to talk about it but I bet there's a lot of mistakes that go on that I don't find out and I know we have an operations manager that I know covers up for a lot of mistakes here and there but the good thing about that is it gives them a safe space to learn on like I said these folks like I like to hire people that are smarter and better than I am and when they make a mistake and they find out about it they know I don't need to know all of them um but so it's okay I mean we only we only learn through mistakes though

[39:16]  right I think often we come into this fallacy where we think we have to be perfect but the times when you truly learn is when you mess up really bad and you're like oh man I'm never doing that again and so I feel like we have to have a healthy relationship with failing forward as well and sometimes that's really tough because that's not the world that we come from that's the only way you can be successful in business long term is if you have a healthy relationship with that failure yeah well you can't come back and that in the end it goes back to what you talked about like having a safe space we I have a safe space to screw up because no one knows but everybody I work with has to also have a safe space to screw up even if I know so I can't screw that up for them Jeff Bezos I was listening to to a presentation he was talking about and he was like you guys want to hear about one of the biggest failures I've ever had he's like I spent

[40:03]  $690 million failing creating the fir phone the competitor to the Google pixel and the Apple um iPhone he said we were going to create this phone to be competitive but one thing that we found out after we invested almost a billion dollars into this it wasn't going to work out but guess what we created a safe environment in the culture of Amazon so we can experiment and what we got out of that experiment was Alexa and the Kindle two of our primary offerings that we have in the marketplace today there you go balloons for it it's very interesting when we can cultivate a culture of experimentation because failure is encouraged and that's the only way that we can kind of Lean Forward into the future if if we're willing to experiment and mess up on things yeah you're not gonna you're not going to find out if you're scared to

[40:50]  venture down New Paths you're not going to venture down them you just again they come back to boundaries you need to know we try out different services and different models of stuff all the time we have a boundary of when like okay if this isn't really showing a return or if we're not really successful we're realizing we're putting in way too much work on this we have a threshold that we sometimes have to talk about um but that's part of the process because you know when we find that thing that works it's going to return back on us you know three four five times fold and it's going to make that up for all those mistakes but again boundaries have a limit but go down those dark paths and you don't know what you're gonna find so if you could go back in time let's call it 5 to 10 years and you could have a secret conversation with Elizabeth who

[41:39]  isn't as experienced what type of advice would you give her for the future to come to where you're at here today I would let her know that that she she can do it she's G to make it and not to be afraid and that all those voices in your head or the voices that you've heard over the years or and I know this sounds really cliche but like there was a lot of and it's going to be really really hard I think too it's going to be really really hard but it's going to be worth it um don't give up on yourself don't give up on the people around you um and lean into the people that are that are still by your side or supporting you or believe in you or who see you and are like you got something keep going lean into your

[42:29]  Champions I love that you know one of the things that we do here on the podcast is we have our previous guest ask you a blind question now the previous guest is a Founder named Jessica Workman and she is the CEO and founder of adapt ABA and she wanted to ask a question I think you're going to have a great answer to this what are your what is your best advice for supporting your staff in avoiding burnout oh fantastic um I I I think it's it's listening it's listening to them finding out what is hard what are you struggling with and it's not always like this job is hard this job is if you don't get burned out we don't have systems and structures in place right now because of our fast

[43:16]  growth we didn't plan for that we don't know what it looks like in this field um so it's it's you've you've really got to like what's the word on the that I'm looking for um I mean I guess it it's just it's just listening and knowing like there's there's times when I don't like ABA when I'm not happy with it and I'm not amused like I said there's time when when I was really burned out I didn't want to be a behavior analyst anymore um um but I needed to just take a minute and sit why is it hard do I not like Behavior Analysis no that's I was tired I was tired I was alone I was scared there was so much more to it than just that um and if they say like I don't like coming to work every day because

[44:03]  everybody here is a big old jerk they don't not like the job they don't like how people treat each other um so I think listening to what their real reasons are what would make you stay and what would make you leave like knowing what would make people stay was very enlightening in that study that I was involved in and this is the truest form of leadership right I mean I was having a conversation with a buddy of mine and I asked him how amazing would it be if you had an opportunity to sit down with your boss and instead of talking about the job they asked you what do you want to accomplish here how can we use this job as an opportunity for you to become your best self and that element of just connecting with people who you're in charge of managing and being a leader

[44:49]  for is something that I don't think we see enough but I think we're seeing a glimpse of somebody who really prioritizes that stuff Elizabeth so I just want to I just want to say thank you so much for coming on the show and for the last couple seconds here how can people find more information about EMG Consulting where can they go to how can they get in touch with you oh I would love that um our website is www.m gab.com um we're on Instagram um like I said we have a website we're on um Facebook um and I'm on LinkedIn um so I'm more than happy to interact with people there or any like-minded folks or anything um anybody wants to chat about anything um I'm always interested in learning from other people who are in similar spaces and doing the same things and have the same value that's what saved me so Bring it on Bring It

[45:39]  On You guys heard her guys well bring it on and go reach out and create an awesome connection with this amazing leader who sits across from me truly the definition of heart and hustle Elizabeth once again thank you for coming on the show really appreciate it thank you for the space so much