Joining me today is Kyle Christensen, a business strategy enthusiast, to discuss the importance of giving ourselves the freedom to fail. Together, we'll reflect on our personal experiences of falling short and Kyle will share valuable insights on how to establish clear expectations as an employer or employee.
Watch the full episode below or listen on Apple/Spotify Podcasts. (Check out more episodes on our Gone Phishing page!)
Episode 11: Listen on Apple
Full Episode 011 Transcript:
00:00:00:12 - 00:00:36:06
Connor Swalm
Welcome to Gone phishing, a show diving into the cybersecurity threats that surround our highly connected lives. Every human is different. Every person has unique vulnerabilities that expose them to potentially successful social engineering. On this show, we'll discuss human vulnerability and how it relates to unique individuals. I'm Connor Sloan, CEO, Phin security, and welcome to Gone phishing, everyone. It is founder CEO and welcome back to gone phishing today I am joined by a friend of mine, Kyle Christensen.
00:00:36:12 - 00:00:57:15
Connor Swalm
He is some guy that does things in the channel. Nobody really knows. But he's here. He has spent the last 20 years as a leader, operator, business nerd, and has helped MSPs and tech companies exceed expectations by growing faster than they ever thought they could. Some even call him a Chief Accountability Officer. Kyle, how are you doing?
00:00:58:08 - 00:01:00:18
Kyle Christensen
What's up, my buddy? How are you, man?
00:01:01:05 - 00:01:06:18
Connor Swalm
I am doing amazing. Never a bad day in my life. And if that changes, it will have must have been a really bad day.
00:01:07:08 - 00:01:11:16
Kyle Christensen
And I say how cool that thing is. I get warning like 100 times, man.
00:01:12:03 - 00:01:18:02
Connor Swalm
You can't. A lot of people have worn it. By the end of whichever conference we bought these two, we had like half of the conference wearing it.
00:01:18:20 - 00:01:21:16
Kyle Christensen
Yeah, my girlfriend stole mine.
00:01:22:14 - 00:01:34:07
Connor Swalm
I can get you. Just send me some your home address. I'm not phishing you out of it, I swear. Just send me your home address and I'll. I'll get them over to you. But Chief Accountability Officer, is do people really call you that?
00:01:35:03 - 00:01:53:08
Kyle Christensen
I actually I fell into it a little bit. One of my clients started calling me because I help all my clients build strategies. And in those strategies, you build out their org charts, countable charts on the charts term they are. And the one differentiator between myself and a lot of other business coaches out there is I stick around and I beat the drum, right?
00:01:53:08 - 00:02:18:10
Kyle Christensen
I keep the discipline going. So they put me on their org chart as the chief reminder officer. This is like four or five years ago and I never really thought anything of it. And then I told a couple of clients that same thing. So they, they copy one of them put me VP of get done and then the other put me on the org chart as Chief Accountability Officer and I kind of stuck with it, you know, think it was kind of this, this crazy idea.
00:02:19:11 - 00:02:39:10
Kyle Christensen
Everyone has a business plan. Everyone has some idea of what they want to do with their business. But the only way to turn that into results is with discipline. Yeah. And I think that's where a lot of people start to get lost in the direction of their organization, because discipline is tough, especially for us entrepreneurs.
00:02:40:08 - 00:02:57:11
Connor Swalm
Discipline is very tough. That's why I weigh a little more than I'd like to, you know. So it just has to be good. Actually, that reminds me of the I don't know who Mike Tyson cause everyone has a plan to like punch him in the mouth. Yeah, that was it.
00:02:58:19 - 00:03:05:11
Kyle Christensen
Or in in the A-Team. It was sort of said, make the plan, work the plan. Time to forget the plan.
00:03:05:11 - 00:03:24:18
Connor Swalm
Yeah, it's a sometime. All plans start with the best intentions, but if you're not committed to, you know, those lofty goals or those ambitions that you have, you're you're going to lose focus. And I have a feeling that wraps into what we wanted to talk about today. So for those of you listening, this is a slightly different topic than normal.
00:03:24:18 - 00:03:39:07
Connor Swalm
But Kyle is a business coach and helps people achieve results. Something I am super, super invested in it today. It's a concept I have not heard until roughly 15 minutes ago. It's called derring do. So what does that mean?
00:03:40:13 - 00:04:14:04
Kyle Christensen
What does that mean to me? It actually I saw it from Jim Collins. Okay. Jim, Kansas. I do. Yeah. Good. The Great Built to last. Right. A lot of the concepts that Geno Wickman came up with in their operating system, that was the source material for a lot of it. And what he did was an interview series where he was interviewing just random people, kind of like what you are doing right now, Connor, in what he found when interviewing Aerosmith, the band was he was asking them about their writing process and how did they come up with weird songs like Love in an Elevator?
00:04:14:18 - 00:04:38:02
Kyle Christensen
Like, you're like, how does that even become a song? What is the process to figuring out that, you know, I'm I'm fornicating in an elevator, whatever you want to call that. And they had this process that they called it their suck meeting. And in a suck meeting, they literally would just write on just stupid ideas, one word, two word, whatever, and throw it on the table.
00:04:39:08 - 00:05:01:00
Kyle Christensen
Because what they wanted to do was create a process in their writing to where they didn't have to be inhibited or limited in any of the things that they wanted to have come out of their mouth. Right. Because to write a lot of times were afraid to make decisions because of some level of validation or expectation that we put on ourselves or we get put on by our community.
00:05:01:19 - 00:05:26:08
Kyle Christensen
Right. If we think of the old adage, though, that Winston Churchill used to say perfection is the enemy of progress. So in really thinking about that with Aerosmith and whether this was cognizant or not, probably not because they were probably high off there the whole time was that they needed some level to go. Put the idea on the table and let's just see if we can come up with some words and we call that the Dare to Suck meeting.
00:05:26:08 - 00:05:44:21
Kyle Christensen
And Jim Collins actually turned that into an entrepreneurial practice, which was there are no bad ideas. There's actually just more lack of try. We are no bad ideas. Yeah, there is. And I've been in some meetings where I think I could challenge that and I think your reaction says you could challenge that.
00:05:45:12 - 00:06:00:03
Connor Swalm
Yeah, I remember the days of Purple Hynes Mustard, so there are absolutely bad ideas. Ideas that should, you know, maybe they make their way into the dare to suck meeting, but they should never make their way out for sure.
00:06:00:05 - 00:06:04:06
Kyle Christensen
You know, just brainstorm and throw it at the wall. Let's literally throw the ketchup at the wall and.
00:06:04:19 - 00:06:24:04
Connor Swalm
See what sticks. This this actually reminds me of a quote I used to watch Adventure Time and busy listening and it's dude sucking at something is the first step towards being sort of good at something. I think the whole sentiment that we're trying to get to is when you first start anything, you're not any good at it. That should never stop you from starting.
00:06:25:09 - 00:06:31:01
Connor Swalm
What is something you've messed up in the past that you don't want to mess up again too?
00:06:31:22 - 00:07:04:01
Kyle Christensen
There's one thing that always has really beat me up over the years, and it it goes even back to my days of doing turnarounds for retail. And for me, what always sucked was when I know an employee and I have plenty of examples like this, but any time I've had a moment where an employee is failing due to lack of mentorship or expectation setting, and not because of my inability to mentor them, but because I just didn't have my own intent or I didn't really know at the end of the day what they were truly doing.
00:07:04:05 - 00:07:23:04
Kyle Christensen
A great example is when I started to take over the first MSP, I was helping run, right? A lot of the people that I came into the environment with didn't really have job descriptions, they didn't have job roles, they didn't have job expectations. They were just, hey, you know, show up, work some tickets. If it gets assigned to you, go ahead and knock them out.
00:07:23:21 - 00:07:46:01
Kyle Christensen
And I never really write. I've always been an accountability guy. I've always been a discipline and make sure you're delivering guy. But it's really different when there's a lack of target, there's a lack of direction. There's you know, we can say KPIs all we want, but sometimes you could say, hey, I'm going to measure you on how much purple Heinz ketchup you consume in a week.
00:07:46:12 - 00:08:15:22
Kyle Christensen
Right. But does it drive any company? Does it drive the company forward? And having this bottom up analysis of if this employee is doing something that I expect them to do can get really lost in translation on, is it even worth our time and effort? I mean, I don't know though you of had jobs I mean especially in the beginning I had no idea why I was doing I'm sitting going this is a wasted time.
00:08:16:11 - 00:08:18:13
Connor Swalm
Yeah. Oh, I've had a lot of those.
00:08:20:03 - 00:08:32:03
Kyle Christensen
And you know, the employees feel that way too. Now where it really gets gross is when you have a situation where you almost have to fire the employee or let them go because they're so lost now down the road.
00:08:32:19 - 00:08:33:20
Connor Swalm
That they can't go back.
00:08:33:21 - 00:08:34:14
Kyle Christensen
To redemption.
00:08:35:16 - 00:08:35:23
Connor Swalm
Yeah.
00:08:36:21 - 00:08:47:04
Kyle Christensen
And in in whenever I have my clients bring me on board, I have to set the expectation with a lot of times that part of the restructure that I'm going to bring them, there's going to be 15 to 20% attrition.
00:08:47:21 - 00:08:50:06
Connor Swalm
Is that normal or is that high? I don't I don't know.
00:08:50:14 - 00:09:20:13
Kyle Christensen
I don't know if it's normal or high, but it's happened every single time I've done and I've done it a lot now. And usually the excuse we give ourselves right, is, you know, oh, well, it's easier to hire somebody new than to correct the bad habit, which it is, that that is the unfortunate nature of this problem. But it always feels horrible because, you know, when you're doing it that it's kind of my fault that they're getting fired or that they're being let go or I'm managing them out.
00:09:21:15 - 00:09:47:08
Connor Swalm
Something that I just started saying is if I have one on ones with a lot of my team members, and I said, basically, if you don't help me set expectations, I've already set them for you. So if you want your input and your abilities and where you think this role should be going at all factored into what my what I expect is like, I need you to impress that upon me or it's already going to be impressed upon you.
00:09:48:07 - 00:10:14:05
Connor Swalm
And so far, you know, I haven't been doing that very long, but so far that's come with wonderful outcomes because it's the worst feeling is when that employee feels loss and then you feel responsible for that and in reality, if you're a leader, a lot of your employees failing should fall, rightfully so, back upon yourself and all of that could have been prevented with like kind of what you had mentioned with proper training.
00:10:15:18 - 00:10:38:21
Kyle Christensen
Well, because the opposite can also happen too, right? Where you start to manage in fear of holding them accountable, where you do some of the work for them. Yeah, right. You become their safety net. You you become your own worst enemy. In that instance. So to me, right, to answer the question real high level, which is I don't want to ever manage again without clear direction.
00:10:39:08 - 00:10:50:11
Kyle Christensen
I want to manage people unless I know what the top level objective is so I can work everything backwards so I don't have to sit there and go, okay, what's my hypothetical judgment of if this employees, good or not.
00:10:50:11 - 00:10:54:00
Connor Swalm
A clear direction and clear expectations?
00:10:54:22 - 00:10:57:06
Kyle Christensen
Yeah, that's pretty reasonable, right?
00:10:58:04 - 00:11:27:10
Connor Swalm
I feel like. Yeah. Any so if anyone's ever applying to a job and you're listening to this podcast right now, you should absolutely ask your your potential employer what's expected in this role. What are you mentioned the word KPI. What are the key performance indicators that I will be my productivity will be judged based on and if they don't have a solid answer for that, it's probably a red flag if they haven't put enough effort into it or you're just going to run into some rocky roads at some point.
00:11:27:23 - 00:11:39:12
Kyle Christensen
And there's a good chance they're going to manage you with a moving target because you have to move them and have to change it. They're going to hire some business coach at one point, so it's going to tell them, Hey, your KPI suck, let's go change everyone's job description.
00:11:39:12 - 00:11:43:16
Connor Swalm
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which nobody benefits when that happens.
00:11:44:14 - 00:11:56:08
Kyle Christensen
Now and then feels awkward. And then your own self esteem in your own drive and passion starts to wane about you would have you messed up in.
00:11:57:03 - 00:12:16:00
Connor Swalm
About five if I sat here and told you how many things I've messed up, we'd never get off the chair. I'll go through it real quick. It's actually a really funny story. First house I ever flipped. I think it was 19, maybe 20 at the time. And I created a contract, an agreement, a draw schedule with my set of contractors.
00:12:16:00 - 00:12:36:07
Connor Swalm
I was basically acting as the general contract. And here is where this applies to everyone's life. I made an agreement. Me and the other party completely agreed on the agreement, not only the compensation but the timeline, the work that was listed in this agreement. And we were off to the races and we get about four months into this project together and contract.
00:12:36:07 - 00:12:58:00
Connor Swalm
It comes to me and says, Hey, I need a bit of the money stipulated in this agreement early, even though I haven't done some, some, some of the work. And that's called a draw schedule. As you complete work, you get some money complete more work, you get some more money. And that's how you make sure your contract is not going to run off with the entire bit of cash and that everything's moving according to plan.
00:12:58:00 - 00:13:15:17
Connor Swalm
So me being me also 19, I've never done this before. I was like, Oh, yeah, no problem. Here you go. I think it was like a 30 $500 check and I go home talking to my dad and I tell my dad basically what it just happened. And he just starts laughing and I was like, What? What are you laughing at?
00:13:15:21 - 00:13:42:16
Connor Swalm
He's like, Oh, you're never seeing that money again. I was like, This is yeah, this is 19 year old me. I go, You don't know what you're talking about. Oh, totally. And it's like, okay, sure. And it's as if that story was getting read to a child that, you know, bedtime stories at night like the next day, my contractor stopped answering my texts, my emails, my phone calls, and I never heard from him again.
00:13:43:11 - 00:14:02:05
Connor Swalm
He literally took the money and ran and I had to go back to that property on New On on Christmas Eve to do the work that I had just paid this guy to do, which was to install, trim, hang doors and put the, you know, the door handles in the door jams and stuff into place and cut it out.
00:14:03:08 - 00:14:27:02
Connor Swalm
I had to go to a house in New Year's sorry, Christmas Eve and do that. Never did that again, not once. And I got into some tricky scenarios after the fact with some other contractors who were clearly robbing Peter to pay Paul. And I was like, Nope, I learned the first time I did this, I was lucky enough to screw it up so badly I lost 30 $500 that I'm not doing this.
00:14:27:10 - 00:14:41:00
Connor Swalm
So either I'm finding a new contractor or you're going to do this as agreed to initially. And every single time they went away and did what they were asked to do. So set expectations. Everyone, let's just do that and you'll be on a really good spot.
00:14:41:19 - 00:14:58:05
Kyle Christensen
It's funny, we're kind of on the similar path, right? We both had something where we weren't clear in what we were expecting and we drew it. We felt like at the end of the day, it hurt, right? Like you fire the wrong employee, you hold the wrong thing accountable, your own results don't trickle up. You're not putting money in your pocket.
00:14:59:03 - 00:15:04:12
Connor Swalm
Yep, absolutely. Any any last second words of advice.
00:15:04:20 - 00:15:27:00
Kyle Christensen
Last words of advice, idioms. Honestly, at the end of the day, when it comes to this, perfection is the enemy of progress. That Churchill quote, more than anything I think is the biggest thing that especially as it providers, technology professionals, we can keep in mind because we always try to go after the perfect solution because it always has to be perfectly right.
00:15:27:08 - 00:15:35:23
Kyle Christensen
But we just that we lose progress and that progress ends up being on our shoulders as the owners don't go don't get don't fall into that sinkhole.
00:15:37:06 - 00:15:44:00
Connor Swalm
Don't want that sinkhole. Perfection is the enemy of progress. You heard it here. Maybe first, probably not with me.
00:15:44:00 - 00:15:44:23
Kyle Christensen
Winston Churchill said.
00:15:44:23 - 00:16:02:18
Connor Swalm
It. So he's, you know, just a no name historical figure. Nobody's going to know no. Anyways, everybody, thank you for listening. Once again, I am Connor CEO at been joined by Kyle Christensen and you've been listening to gone phishing.
00:16:05:11 - 00:16:27:02
Connor Swalm
Thanks so much for tuning in to Gone phishing. If you want to find out more about high quality security awareness training campaigns, how to launch them in ways that actually engage employees to change their habits. Then check us out Phin security at phinsec.io. That's in some scenario or click all of the wonderful links in our show notes.
00:16:27:13 - 00:16:31:15
Connor Swalm
Thanks for phishing with me today and we'll see you next time.
