Contagious Company Culture: How Trisha Daho Turns Teams Into Growth Engines | Ep. 167

Trisha Daho: 00:00:00

If you live in integrity, your people will give you the benefit of the doubt.

If you can stay in integrity and stay according to the values you said we stood for in this company, you don't have to be a perfect leader, but you have to be one that's always living in integrity.

Intro-Outro: 00:00:14

But I am the world's biggest super fan. You're like a super fan. Welcome to the Business Superfans podcast.

We will discuss how establishing business superfans from customers, employees and business partners can elevate your success exponentially. Learn why these advocates are a key factor to achieving excellence in the world of commerce.

This is the Business Super Fans Podcast with your host, Freddy D. Freddy, Freddy.

Freddy D: 00:00:44

Hey, super fans. Superstar Freddy D. Here.

In this episode 167, we're joined by Trisha Daho, the former Big Four partner who spent her career solving one of the toughest challenges service based businesses face. Building a people strategy that actually drives performance, culture and long term growth.

For years, she's led large, diverse teams across the U.S. uncovering billions in sustainable value for Fortune 500 companies, entrepreneurs and high growth firms, all while championing inclusion and developing leaders who've gone on to become partners, CFOs and CEOs. Now, as a founder of Empowered, she helps organizations create healthier cultures, stronger talent pipelines, and more accountable leadership.

If you've ever struggled to hire, develop or retain the right people, Tricia brings a fresh, practical path forward. Welcome, Trisha, to the Business Superfans podcast show. Great conversation that we had before we started recording.

You're in France, that's my home country. You spent time in Detroit. That's where I grew up. So welcome to the show.

Trisha Daho: 00:02:01

Thank you for having me.

Freddy D: 00:02:02

So, Tricia, you've got an interesting background, you've done a lot of great things, and now you're spending time over in France and Paris. What's the story that got you to where you're at today? Let's get into the backstory. How did it all evolve and come about?

Trisha Daho: 00:02:18

Well, I started my career in economics and finance and then went to law school. Right after school undergrad, I kind of majored in tax law, then went directly into a big four accounting firm, made partner in that firm.

Then about seven years after I made partner, I thought to myself, actually the precursor was I met my husband and he asked a question I'd never asked me myself, which is, do you really love this that much to spend 75 hours a week doing it? And nobody had ever asked me that question and the answer was not really.

ut and started my own firm in: 2014

Freddy D: 00:03:04

Why did you pick that part of the industry? I mean, coming from an accounting, that's a complete pivot. That's a complete different direction.

Trisha Daho: 00:03:11

I was in charge of a team of 50 to 100 people when I was there. I did all that for them.

Lots of leader development, lots of people development, lots of onboarding, lots of performance management, retention building, talent acquisition strategies. All that stuff I did. And I loved that part of it the most. I happen to love people. I find them utterly fascinating.

So that's why I wanted to do this for a living. I actually thought I could have more impact as a third party than I was having as a partner in a giant firm.

Freddy D: 00:03:38

People.

Freddy D: 00:03:39

Quite interesting, especially when you meet people from different cultures and different backgrounds and different belief systems and everything else and getting them all into what I would call a racing rowboat. Everybody has an oar.

And I remember being in Lincoln Park, Chicago and watching them practice and you know, you'd see some of the teams that were just getting started and they were combobulated because nobody was in synchronization. The boat wasn't going anywhere. It wasn't even going in a circle. It was just kind of wobbling nowhere.

And so really what you're doing is you're helping get everybody into that boat. You're kind of like the coxswan of the boat and getting everybody in line and getting everybody in synchronization.

And once that happens, that boat flies just as well as that. The business takes off and just take skyrockets.

Trisha Daho: 00:04:25

What I tell people I speak in front of is that the people happen to be the product. You can't shovel a terrible culture under the rug. It shows up. It shows up as client service. It shows up in all these ways.

You must handle the people part of it. And in many of these industries that are service based, those people didn't decide to become great people leaders.

They decided to become great technical practitioners, for example, like lawyers and accountants, et cetera. I like to fill the gap of what they showed up to be and help them be great at people too.

Freddy D: 00:04:56

How do you go about that?

Trisha Daho: 00:04:57

Well, it depends on what they need. So we get called into all kinds of situations, but typically we can help with anything in the human resources life cycle type thing.

Let me give an example. The accounting industry in the US There's a shortage of accounting professionals coming out of school just in my alma mater which is pretty large.

Midwestern college in accounting are down 25%. They're jumping into finance because the starting salary in finances are higher right now. Okay, what do we do now?

Well, I am not a conventional hire to the accounting industry. I was a lawyer who majored in econ and finance.

I had two accounting classes back in the early 90s and I managed to do okay, so how do we expand where you're looking and get very precise on what skill sets we need regardless of major, what skill sets they'll call me in to help them. That exercise is how do we find where to go look for them. Also how do we brand ourselves to attract them? It's a combination.

We do a lot of performance management. Performance management is one of the most difficult things for service based companies to effectuate for many reasons.

But nobody wants to tell people the truth. They want to be nice and then they get into trouble when they're not fully honest.

Well, being fully honest in a culture is a very positive thing and that's what we're shooting for. Being very honest in a culture that is not thriving is rough and has rough consequences. We handle all the gambit of that.

But that's in a nutshell how we get called in. There's something missing, there's a gap.

We do culture surveys for example and we'll come up with a report and we'll tell them all the different things we should focus on in the near term and further along and they engage us to help them implement.

Freddy D: 00:06:31

That's the front line is really, I think people don't realize the fact leaders, I should say that person that is answering the phone to a prospective customer or an existing customer, supplier, distributor, any part of that whole business echo system. That's the first impression I had a guest on that basically came up with a great term and they're the director of first impressions.

You need to treat that person as a director, not the person that's the lowest on the totem pole. That really should be the highest person on the totem pole and the most important person in your company because that's the interaction to the world.

Trisha Daho: 00:07:11

Right? This is what my company is and what we mean and how you can.

Freddy D: 00:07:14

Trust us or not someone that's disgruntled, you can't hide it. The tonality comes across, I tell people it even comes across in emails because a choice of words that they pick it's going to be.

You can tell the tonality and you can't hide it, you can try to fake it, right? It comes across and then the other person gets that feeling and goes, not sure about these guys, they may go on to the next organization.

What you're doing is really helping businesses realize the assets that they've got and maximizing those assets to where everybody thrives.

Trisha Daho: 00:07:50

Frankly, some of that self awareness is most important at the top. Everyone is watching leaders. They're watching how you look, your facial expression when you walk in in the morning.

They're looking, they're looking to how you talk to your wife on the phone. They're looking to how you handle their colleagues. They're looking to how you talk to clients. They're looking to see if there's two faces of Freddie.

You become super alert basically because everyone is watching what you're going to do next and they're replicating what you do because they know that you get rewarded for what you do.

So it's very important that the leadership understand that and understand that the skill sets they have right now at this current level of their business are not what they're going to need at this level. They're going to have to elevate themselves in the process.

Freddy D: 00:08:33

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Freddy D: 00:09:49

But you bring up a great point because I remember I was working with a company a couple years ago and they would hire somebody on they didn't find necessarily the best talent. They looked at who Was they could afford number one, we all know that, what that costs.

And then they would train them verbally, no SOPs, no stuff, nothing like that. Then they would turn them loose. So they would train them for two, three, four days. It was primary scheduling, wasn't rocket science work.

But it was still very important because they were working with contractors and customers and stuff like that. So they were an intricate part really.

And if they would make a mistake instead of, hey Tricia, come over here, let me talk to you in whatever, it would be done in public. I'm really sharing this because I want to emphasize what you just said. Everybody saw that.

And basically it was the whole company got chastised, not that individual. And then they were wondering why people were quitting every 90 days. Because they couldn't handle it emotionally anymore.

Trisha Daho: 00:10:48

Because what that says to everybody is, I can't trust you. You will handle someone like that. Then you'll handle any of us like that.

If they're going to stay long term in a place you have two weeks to give a strong first impression that lasts.

Freddy D: 00:10:59

The other part happens is they're there because they need a paycheck. Yeah, they'll put up with it, but their work quality and their output is horrible. And it becomes cancerous.

All the fellow employees, because now there's bickering going on because so and so is just they're not pulling their weight well because they're just there to collect a paycheck and they're doing absolute minimum so they don't get fired. It just snowballs and the whole morale and the whole culture in the company becomes toxic.

Trisha Daho: 00:11:29

Sad part is that a lot of times people are high potential. So leaders will look at that and say, we got to get rid of this person.

And never take a look in the mirror and say, what did we not do to support this person? Where did we fall down as leadership? So it becomes just a revolving door that wasn't the right guy. At some point you're the common denominator.

So it's important to be really self reflective.

My criteria for taking on clients is what level of self awareness do they have and what level of self awareness are they willing to take as we move through the process?

Freddy D: 00:11:58

And are they willing to pivot, adjust, tweak themselves? That's the hardest thing for people to do, is to change. It took me several years to convince my wife from Detroit to move to Arizona.

She didn't want to meet some bloke and then go halfway across the country and it doesn't work out. I mean, I get it, but we wasted three, four years until we made that happen. Because change is very difficult and it doesn't matter what level it is.

I mean, you could be running a hundred million dollar company if you can't change and adjust. A lot of these businesses go out of business because they didn't pivot to the marketplace.

Trisha Daho: 00:12:36

It's gotta be like a constant eye on how to thrive. Group of people doing something together.

Freddy D: 00:12:41

One of the best leaders I ever saw in my career, especially in the software industry, was I remember and I've shared a story in the past because it was reflective of that person's management style. And we were prepping for a demo late at night because the demo is the next morning.

And this is back in the day when people would come into your office to take a look at the software. I was selling Computer Aided Manufacturing and computer aided design, CAD CAM space.

And about: 11:30

Goes like, don't stay up late, but I know you guys are going to stay up late, left. But we were all like, wow, that was so cool that he cared enough.

We basically pulled an all nighter and washed up in a bathroom and whatever, went to the gym and came back very presentation, did a presentation at the end of the day. It was a Thursday, remember? He goes, right guys, see you Monday, get the heck out of here. But those are the little things.

One of my quotes that I talk a lot about is the little things are really the big thing.

Trisha Daho: 00:13:53

I tell this story a lot, but one of the most important dealings I ever had with a leader of mine was this guy that I worked with. He actually was the one who sponsored me for partner. And he was the complete different personality than I was.

He was very introverted, politically savvy behind the scenes. I was not, frankly. But we understood each other really quickly.

He would give me a ton of autonomy, tell me this is what I expect based on that autonomy. I'd go out and make it happen. He would help behind the scenes with who needed to know what I was accomplishing. He wasn't extraordinarily personable.

He was a nice guy, but he wasn't very gregarious. My dad, when I was young got sick and died of cancer the year before I made partner. This boss of mine lived about Three hours away from my parents.

He showed up at calling hours and I will never forget that as long as I live. This man would drive three hours to go to calling hours for my father. If you live in integrity, your people will give you the benefit of the doubt.

If you gain some, stay in integrity and stay according to the values you said we stood for in this company. You don't have to be a perfect leader, but you have to be one that's always living in integrity.

Freddy D: 00:14:55

What he did is doing the unexpected. It's really not that difficult to get a team rowing with momentum in one direction. It really isn't.

You just got to get people out of their own way a lot of times.

Trisha Daho: 00:15:09

Yeah. The hard part, frankly, there are millions of books on leadership.

If we could read a book and be great at it, I wouldn't have a job, frankly, I could find something else to do. The issue is that it takes a lot of understanding yourself and then understanding yourself in relation to others and what they need from you.

Knowing that what they need from you is going to be different from person to person to person. Once you figure that out, that's kind of the secret sauce.

But so few leaders get to that point of truly understanding how they're showing up and the impact they're currently having so we can help them get to the next level of leadership.

Freddy D: 00:15:44

It's the same thing with co workers, understanding how co workers interact with one another because you've got the disc personality types. I go back to the. The old driver. Expressive. Yeah. Amiable and analytic personalities.

And you get a driver personality talking to an amiable person and they're completely talking two different languages for all practical purposes. You got to get everybody to understand they're different and you need to pivot a little bit when you're interacting with so and so.

A lot of companies don't do that. They don't really take the time to get the team to really understand the culture of the individuals within their team.

Trisha Daho: 00:16:24

They're not intentional about it. Wherever the cards fall is what the culture is.

And then they deal with the ramifications of that over and over again instead of saying, let's be intentional about what we stand for and make sure we're living and breathing it every day and hold ourselves accountable to it so that you have thriving, high performing people in your culture.

Freddy D: 00:16:41

So share a story with us, Tricia, of how you worked with an organization that was and really kind of got them going to where they're thriving today and now they're a super fan of the work that you guys do, we.

Trisha Daho: 00:16:54

Often get called into what I call culture crisis situations. It's really intense work.

When we do get called to do it, usually it'll be a call for an employment attorney saying, look, this stuff happened, can you come in and clean it up? We say, absolutely. We work with a team. There's usually an attorney, a PR person, all that kind of stuff working together.

We had a scenario actually during COVID where there was a, let's say, a toxic work environment. They had thrown the CEO out because they had determined that that person had a lot to do with it.

I never met that CEO and I was charged with figuring out what was really going on, number one. So assessing the current state, just like any strategic implementation, found out from their people that what the real flavor of that was.

How is this culture different for you than the guy next to you? What is the impact of what was happening, et cetera. We designed probably eight or nine strategies.

Different things they had to focus on to work and turn the ship around to be a culture that was intentional and thriving in the right direction. We typically work with clients for 18 months to two years on that. But at the end, replace the CEO function.

Their COO had a lot more autonomy and power to get things done because he was a really, really strong player. Their people had reorganized and actually unionized during this process. So that was a whole other paradigm for how they worked.

They had called values based behaviors in place. So create those corporate values that you hang on your wall in your conference room and then no one ever does anything with them.

What we do is typically help the firm establish that and then make sure it threads through everything in the organization.

How you're assessed as leaders, how you're assessed as employees, how you're going to acquire talent, like what you're going to ask these candidates to make sure they meet your values. So that's what we did for them.

And it turned around to be a great story now that they were already frankly very prolific and popular and successful consumer brand from a standpoint. But their culture was really failing.

So it was really helping these leaders stand up for what they really believed in and make sure that everyone understood that and get them on the same page.

Freddy D: 00:18:54

Interesting story because leadership is something that's quite important because a lot of times you'll find leaders that are leaders until they need to be a leader. In an of a sudden they throw people underneath the bus.

Trisha Daho: 00:19:10

They just stop and don't move and don't communicate and kind of huddle in their Office with their head down and no one knows what's going on, which is even. Which is just as toxic, frankly.

Freddy D: 00:19:18

Versus standing up for the team and saying, hey, okay, my fault. I'll take the hit.

And usually when the team sees that, that person becomes even more important to the team because now they respect that leader because he took the hit for the team and didn't throw Bobby or Susie underneath the bus and that they rally behind that person. It completely changes the dynamics.

Trisha Daho: 00:19:43

Absolutely. I think one of the most important things you can do as a leader is take responsibility for your actions, your behavior.

Actually, if you email me, my signature block says intention does not equal impact. We know we have good intentions. That isn't even the point anymore. The question is, what impact are we having on the people around us?

If someone can actually do that, if they can take a look and get feedback, that's probably not great about how they're showing up and what impact they're having on other people makes a huge difference in how we move forward.

Freddy D: 00:20:13

One of the things I'd like to talk about is you need to create super fans internally first, because if you've got a team, your team needs to be super fan of your leadership, whatever position you're at with the company, because it all rolls up, but because that's the front line to everything, number one, like we talked earlier. But the second thing is when they go home, man, what a great company. You know what happened today?

We had this party for so and so because it was their birthday or something like that. Those dynamics go on. And then when they're talking with their friends, they're talking about the company that continues on to a supplier.

And you're dealing with a supplier, and the supplier says, man, these guys are cool. I had a guest on my show to talk to, had built a relationship with their supplier. When the pandemic hit, he needed 500 laptops like that.

Everybody else was looking for 500 plus laptops immediately. Well, guess who got his first. Yeah. Because of the relationship he had built and they were super fans of. So he got his laptops right away.

It goes down to. People don't realize, but it affects really the whole business ecosystem.

Because if the employees are just unhappy with the work environment, that affects everybody.

Trisha Daho: 00:21:32

I just did an employee summit last week in Las Vegas and I sat at dinner. It was a leader summit. So There were probably 30 leaders there from all over the country.

I sat next to a guy, I don't remember what his role in the firm was, but he was raving about his company, and more importantly, he was raving about his other people.

When you create a culture where not only am I a super fan of where I work, but I'm a super fan of the guy who's my peer and the guy who works for me and the guy who works above me, we're not competing with each other. We're competing against whatever's out there. And whatever's out there might be us last year. It doesn't have to be another person or another company.

You can create a culture where everyone succeeds. If everyone succeeds, then you've really got something.

Freddy D: 00:22:12

Yeah. It goes back to the racing rowboat guys. They're flying and they can be blindfolded, and they're still in sync.

And they're flying because they're trusting the coxswan and they're just screaming through that water. What you just described is really, that guy is in an organization that's thriving.

I mean, my wife, who's in the room next door, she worked for a hearing aid company. She does phone sales, selling hearing aids to people. She's been with the company going on eight years.

The biggest thing, she's always talking about some of the different things that they're doing. She's going, end of this month, they're flying her down for a company meeting. They bring everybody. She's been remote since she started.

They fly in everybody a couple times once a year, and they have awards and everything else. And then every now and then, they send a little something or she wins.

We finally got married after bazillion years, and we spent part of our stays was in Airbnbs because she won airbnb prizes of $500. So we stacked them up, and that was paid for some of our room stays in different places. So she's a super fan of that company that she works for.

Trisha Daho: 00:23:22

That's great.

Freddy D: 00:23:23

But that's the difference. And I share that, because to your point is that becomes contagious and attracts other people to that business.

She's gotten some people that she knows that she's brought on to the company because she felt comfortable bringing a friend to say, hey, you'd be good at this job, and get him on board.

Trisha Daho: 00:23:43

Yeah. And that's a great way to get new people in the door that, you know, will fit the culture, because these people know them.

They know what the culture is. So they know what'll be a good fit.

Freddy D: 00:23:51

Right. Versus the other ways. Oh, man, you don't want to work at this place.

Trisha Daho: 00:23:55

You can barely hide that now with things like glassfeeling.com or indie.com, the place where you basically rape lawyers on your way out the door. Or you don't really have to say. People don't tend to give public opinions unless they're bad, right?

Freddy D: 00:24:11

No, you're absolutely correct. Right. And that travels fast.

Trisha Daho: 00:24:13

The time to how your employees feel about how you're doing is not when they're walking out the door. It's when they're still fully engaged with you, is when you want to know and find out and seek out that information.

Freddy D: 00:24:25

One of the things that I had learned years ago, I went through Dale Carnegie management training. One of the things I would do is I would have people describe themselves, write their job description.

And when I did that, guess who owned the job description?

Trisha Daho: 00:24:42

They did.

Freddy D: 00:24:43

Wasn't me. It was their job description. We would tweak it to make sure that it aligned with the company. But that's theirs now.

My job is get the heck out of the way and just. I'm the facilitator at that point to making sure they can do what they need to do and step back. And if they need something, show up.

But otherwise give them the autonomy, like you mentioned, and people who surprise you with what they will come up with when you just zip it and let them do it.

Trisha Daho: 00:25:12

Yeah, because most often when you're leaders, people are the ones in the trenches. They're the ones that know how to make it better because they're doing it every single day.

You're not finding out from them how to improve things, and they don't feel comfortable expressing a contrary opinion.

For example, that's one of the top things in our surveys that we do, where we can indicate that there's definitely some kind of cultural issue, is if you can't comfortably tell people in your company that you have an opinion that does not match the rest of the leadership, then you got an issue.

If you can comfortably express, I think we should do it this way, even though everyone's on board with one way, then you know you've got something really.

Freddy D: 00:25:49

Good, 100% on the money.

Because I worked with a company last year for a little bit, and I ended up firing them because of the fact that they weren't receptive to anything that anybody was suggesting because they started the business, they've been doing it for 30 years, and this is how we're doing it. This is how we got here, and this is how we're gonna run this company. And nobody's gonna tell me what to do.

And it's like, okay, good luck with all that.

Trisha Daho: 00:26:21

I know it's based in fear, but probably the most frustrating part of my job is that is trying to express that it's going to be okay if you admit that things aren't perfect and that we're going to make them way better than they are if we do xyz. It's not even easy for me to hear that. I didn't spell the thing. So I get it. It's just one reversal I always say is people do want to do a great job.

They're not just haphazardly doing it. Most of the time, they really are trying and to upset the cart they think they're on because they're not seeing.

What you can see can be hard sometimes. But in a trusted where you each trust you can trust each other enough to be honest, that's where you've really got a culture that is going to be to.

Freddy D: 00:27:01

The point though is that if they're not willing to have that conversation, you got to get rid of them because you can't help them. That's why I said I fired this customer because the fact that I was wasting time, that becomes detrimental to me.

It becomes even more detrimental to the company because others are going to see the. The frustration from me and they're gonna lose confidence in the whole aspect. So it's best to just step out of there.

Trisha Daho: 00:27:28

I always explain it like this. I've only had to fire clients like twice my whole career.

But if you are giving a lot of energy to clients that cannot possibly are just not on board, then you're taking away from the energy you're giving other clients that are on board.

Freddy D: 00:27:44

Right.

Trisha Daho: 00:27:44

And I refuse to do that. I wish them well. I hope they find someone that resonates strongly enough for them to make changes.

But it's not doing anyone a service, including them, because they're paying us to stay where they're not actually changing for our listeners.

Freddy D: 00:27:57

What could they do to kind of review what's their environment within their own company?

Trisha Daho: 00:28:02

There's a couple things they can do. They can do what's called, what I call a culture survey where they ask their people.

So that to me is a collection of qualitative data where you ask your own people how they're experiencing your culture in your business. We get really powerful data that way, especially as a third party because people feel like they can be completely open.

I can't find out who they really are unless there's a court subpoena. That works out pretty well. And it gives us a wealth of information to then say, okay, here's the strategies we do for next.

The other thing you can do is analyze what I call your human resource data, your HR data. Are we going to find candidates? Who are we ultimately hiring as candidates? Are we educating those candidates once they're in the door?

How are we onboarding them access to leadership and great opportunities? Who's getting coaching? Who's getting mentorship, promoting? Who are we terminating?

If you can get an idea of all those things that are happening, you can find the little gaps where things need to be amplified and made better. If you need context, that's the quantitative side, by the way.

If you want context around where you see the culture survey results and that HR data analysis result, then you can do things like focus groups, interviews of individual people, or leadership teams and get some context around what you're seeing in the data you're getting. But all those are really inexpensive ways to get a wealth of data around what to do next compared to most of the stuff I've seen in the past.

Freddy D: 00:29:27

A great insight I'm going to add to that is just make sure that it's all done via the computer so you don't see anybody's handwriting, because you may recognize people's handwriting. So you keep it anonymous. That's the real important. But you're absolutely right on the money.

I think people should do that at least once a year in their company. Get an anonymous feedback of what's going on in the company, what's. Because that gives you the energy of the company, what's happening.

And then you've got to put on your big girl or big boy pants. And there's some adjustments you need to do as the leader. To be a great leader, you've got to be able to make some tweaks.

Trisha Daho: 00:30:04

The other thing I would add on to that is just the practice of doing a cultural survey will lift your culture up a little bit because people want to be asked what they think of how they're feeling about the culture. The other lift, though, is, okay, we heard you. Here's what we heard, here's what we decided to do to focus on fixing that. We're making it better.

I get so many situations where people have in the past not communicated once they actually do something like that. Ask people to bear their souls about their own experience and then never address it. That is like just making it worse.

Freddy D: 00:30:36

That's like hitting a brick wall.

Trisha Daho: 00:30:38

Make sure that they understand you heard them and that you're doing something and you're involving process too.

Freddy D: 00:30:43

Sure.

Freddy D: 00:30:44

Absolutely. Right. And it's not. Okay. Thank you. We heard you. We're going to have pizza next week. That doesn't solve anything. Sorry. So you're right.

I think, think it goes beyond that is actually to make sure that the team understands the change that you're implementing. Because then they'll say, wow, they actually listened to us. Or my suggestion, they took my suggestion. And then you really.

The other thing is you need to recognize the person that if you know who it is. Because I've had it with this company I was with a couple years ago that I mentioned earlier when I took it over.

And we grew by a million dollars in a year. But I got feedback from people on different things we could do. And when we implemented it, I recognize that person for the idea.

And I didn't do it just by themselves. I did it in front of everybody. Because it's one thing to say, hey, Tricia, thank you so much for the effort. I really appreciate it.

It's another thing to say, hey, everybody. I want to take a moment to recognize Tricia for this idea. And look, we've implemented and here's what's happened.

Everybody gets elevated from that perspective.

Trisha Daho: 00:31:43

Be willing to ask the questions you don't want to hear the answers to. Especially.

Freddy D: 00:31:46

That's a hard one. That's a hard one to do. But you gotta, you're right. You gotta do it.

Trisha Daho: 00:31:49

You gotta do it.

Freddy D: 00:31:50

Then sometimes it's going to be ugly.

I remember years ago, I was in charge of global sales and one of the managers came up to me and says, you're killing it, but man, you got some sharp corners. I remember, I mean, it burned into my brain forever. We're growing this thing and that's it.

Yeah, we did, but there was some bodies that got left along the way. And since then I was like, man, it was a big wake up moment. Because at first I took it like, what are you talking about?

Then I stopped and analyzed myself. I was, yeah, yeah, I can be a little rough. I'm a completely far right top. A person was where I was at the pinpoint of the driver perception.

And so I've mellowed since then.

Trisha Daho: 00:32:30

You're probably more effective since you mellowed, right?

Freddy D: 00:32:34

Yeah. Because everybody operates at a different level. And you've got to be able to recognize that and you've got to be able to encourage that.

Because once that happens and everybody starts to see that you respect who they are as a person and their skill sets and what they bring to the table, they'll go out of their way to make sure that you're successful.

Trisha Daho: 00:32:59

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Freddy D: 00:33:01

That's really the bottom line is you empower that team, they'll take it to the championship.

Trisha Daho: 00:33:06

If you don't or you just focus on things they don't care about, they never will.

Freddy D: 00:33:10

That's why you see a sports team, I use the analogy, I mean you can see a team that got the energy. You can tell almost who's going to win when they come on the field.

The people that are relaxed, having fun, everything else, they usually end up winning the game versus the other guys are stone faced or stressed.

You can almost tell and especially when you're watching the game, whether it's European football, AKA soccer for American friends or American football, you can tell and you can't hide it. Especially once they get a momentum going, you can see that energy just keeps building and building and they usually dominate the game.

The same thing in business. It's the same analogy in business. Trisha, as we kind of come to the end here, great conversation, great insights for our listeners.

How can people find you?

Trisha Daho: 00:33:55

The easiest way is just to email me. It's Trisha T R I S h a powered lc.com or look for Trisha Dow on LinkedIn.

Freddy D: 00:34:03

Okay, we'll make sure that's in our show notes. Well, and all the other website and all that stuff. And thank you so much for your time.

Trisha Daho: 00:34:09

Thank you.

Freddy D: 00:34:10

Great conversation. Would definitely love to have you on the show down the road because you and I could talk about this for a bit. I can tell.

Trisha Daho: 00:34:17

Thanks for having me Freddie. All right, take care.

Freddy D: 00:34:21

What an insightful conversation with Tricia Daho today. One of the biggest takeaways she shared is that your people aren't just part of the business, they are the business.

When you build a deliberate people strategy.

Freddy D: 00:34:35

Develop leaders intentionally and create a culture.

Freddy D: 00:34:38

That supports accountability and growth, performance stops being random and starts being repeatable.

And that matters for every service based business owner listening because your scalability, your client experience and your long term prosperity all rise or fall on a strength of the humans behind the work. Tricia's perspective is such a reminder that when you invest in your team, you actually engineering your future success.

If you enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. And if you're ready to stop listening and start activating, join the Entrepreneur Prosperity hub on school completely free.

The moment you join, you'll be surrounded by other service based entrepreneurs who are leveling up their people processes and profitability so they can finally step into true prosperity. Join us here at school s K-O-O-L.com ebeprosperityhub Inside, you'll get access to conversations, tools, and weekly growth paths that help.

Freddy D: 00:35:47

You shift from doing everything yourself to.

Freddy D: 00:35:49

Leading a business that works smoothly, predictably, and profitably.

Freddy D: 00:35:53

Thanks for tuning in today. I'm grateful you're here and part of.

Freddy D: 00:35:57

The Business Superfans journey. Every listen, every action you take get you one step closer to building your own superfans.

Remember, one action, one stakeholder, one super fan closer to lasting prosperity.

Intro-Outro: 00:36:12

We hope you took away some useful knowledge from today's episode of the Business Superfans Podcast. Join us on the next episode as we continue guiding you on your journey to achieve flourishing success in business.