Eric Smith—The CEO's Pit Stop: Find Out How Taking a Break Will Improve Performance

Eric Smith  0:00  
There's nothing like personally taking a step away from the activity and the the whirlwind of the business again, because that's the unique advantage that a CEO or owner has is they can choose to do that, and if they're able to on a regular basis systematically review the different components of their operation, they will start to learn to listen and respond better to the issues that arise when they do that assessment.

David Bush  0:26  
Welcome to the Business Builders Playbook, the show that breaks down the systems and strategies behind predictable revenue growth to win in business. In each episode, we're diving into the proven strategies that separate the winners who scale from the losers who fail. This show is sponsored by BDR AI, the AI-powered business development platform that automates your outbound prospecting, so you can focus in on closing deals instead of chasing leads. Let's get started. Welcome, everybody. My name is David Bush, and I get a chance to be your host and moderator for this exciting webinar. And I cannot wait to introduce you to my friend Eric Smith. And we're going to be talking today about the CEO's pit stop, finding out how to take a break and how that will improve your performance. And we're going to give you some very specific strategies, tactics, and tools that have helped others in a similar seat, just as just like you, to recover from a short pit stop and really accelerate the growth of their business, the growth of themselves, and the growth of their team. So I'm so excited to have my friend Eric Smith here. He is a C12 chair, which is a peer advisory organization which helps Christian CEOs to implement their faith into their work, and Eric's going to tell you a little bit more about that. But Eric, I am so excited to have your expertise and your experience, and your you know your just your life stories that you're going to share with us today. So thanks for joining me today.

Eric Smith  1:54  
Thanks, David. Pleasure to be here.

David Bush  1:56  
Well, let's talk a little bit about Eric before we jump into the Q Q and A and the questions that were submitted. If those of you that are watching this live, if you have more questions and you want to submit them into the chat, or you can use the Q and A feature and submit those there, and we'll try to get them get to those questions in the order in which they're received. But let's talk a little bit about Eric before we get into the details. What brings you to this place where you're working with CEOs and leading out the C12 peer advisory organization. Yeah, it was it was a long road that

Eric Smith  2:30  
I had to take to be able to get here. I spent years in leadership, HR leadership, with startups, SMB, and enterprise size organizations, working through a number of scenarios, and you couple that with so that life experience, going through some very challenging mergers and acquisitions, growth phases, brand transitions, technology migrations. Oh my gosh, it was it was a crazy a crazy wild experience, and then merging that as I aged to find that you know what I really wanted to do in life was integrate all of my all of my interests as as much as I could, and C 12 is that opportunity where we're really looking to bring unity amongst our interests and passions. So bringing my business experience and leadership experience along with my faith, and being able to put those together is what really C12 is about for me, and and what I want to bring to other

David Bush  3:30  
business owners and CEOs for them to experience the joy of living in unity in the way God has made them. Very cool. Well, I'm so excited to get into some of the questions that have been submitted, so the people that are participating today, either live or watching a recording, are oftentimes in. They're interested in learning how to gain that competitive edge and that opportunity to really accelerate their business. And we're asking them to actually slow down a bit before they speed up. And I, you know, the the strategy of slowing down is is not necessarily the goal, but it is on the pathway to the goal. Do you want to talk a little bit more about just before we get into the questions about the concept of why we use the term pit stop? We're going to be playing with some analogies around race cars and just the idea of acceleration and all that. But talk a little bit more about why you chose the title pit stop. Well, you know, the idea of being strategic at its core is being able to step back from the the

Eric Smith  4:30  
busyness of the workday, the busyness of all the inbox, all the customer issues, the technology, and being strategic, which is essential for business leadership, has to happen in some kind of insulation from the activity of every day, and this is an area which I see a lot of business leaders. They they they'll talk about the importance of strategy, but when it comes down, you start asking them some probing questions about when they're taking the time to do it, how they're. What tools are they using to be strategic, and what partners do they call upon to help them with their strategic thinking and planning? Then I start to see a lot of holes and a lot of you know sideways glances and some excuses coming out around why they're not doing that. And for the business leader, there can be nothing more important because there's nobody else in the business that is going to be dedicated to the definition of strategy and then its its its execution. So this this topic to me was essential. We were going through C12, some of the C12 curriculum a number of months ago around the strategic mind and the concept of slowing down is at the core of being able to do that. So it's kind of a it's it's kind of a rough a rough question and a tough one to ask yourself. Are you really willing to take a break from the race to take us take the take the necessary steps and then bring a team around you that can help you succeed and win.

David Bush  6:05  
Yeah, I know that John Maxwell has that great book. When talent isn't enough, you know, and when you know your talent has got you to a certain place, but it can't get you any farther. That's oftentimes, you know, my grandson. I have a two-year-old grandson now, and he loves the movie Cars, and you know Lightning McQueen was a kind of a solo guy. He wanted to run without the team and not pay attention to when the pit crew needed to put tires on, and that lost him the big race. And so, as I was watching that movie the other day, I was thinking about our webinar, going, "Man, there's so many correlations and and just such a great analogy. So let's start with just the the first question, which is around you know we're taught that speed wins, and we're all in a competitive race. We're all trying to beat the competition, but why is moving fast actually a liability for a CEO in your perspective? Well, it comes down to the unique role that a CEO has. They

Eric Smith  7:00  
are they are the ones who can really decide at what pace they want to run. They are they are going to define the race for themselves. And if if the CEO is not willing to take the time out to assess the business on a regular basis and probably assess it more frequently than they're currently doing, then the liability is that they're going to be running a race where they think they're winning, and then something pops, some something breaks in the system, and there'll be all kinds of excuses and post postmortems on why this happened. But you know, a good post mortem on a bad situation is is no better than actually taking the time in advance to do the thing that you should be doing so that you can actually win. So I think this is incumbent. This is not as clear to all CEOs how incumbent upon it is upon them to be the one who initiates the times of slowdown, retreat, assessment, and reflection, so that they can actually pull their team together and do the kind of training and investments they need. So it's it's an overlooked. The reason why I think it's so important is I think it's one of the most overlooked aspects of leadership is that time to to pause, reflect, and and plan.

David Bush  8:21  
Well, the idea of a pit stop, I would say, is got a lot of different applications. I mean, there's maybe a pit stop just in your personal life and taking a moment of reflection for your own personal values and your beliefs and relationships. And then there's also the benefits of having a pit stop from a business perspective. But define what you mean by a pit stop? Is it a a season? Is it a certain amount of time? Like, how would you define a good pit stop to help a CEO to truly win the race? Yeah, I define a pit stop as a planned event on a regular, some kind of regular cadence,

Eric Smith  9:00  
where you're you have a method by which you go through an assessment of your of your work, of your team, your resources, and to get input from others around how that is actually going. You know, I think we try and try to build tools and technology to do all this for us, but there's nothing like personally taking a step away from the activity and the the whirlwind of the business again, because that's the unique advantage that a CEO or owner has is they can choose to do that, and if they're able to on a regular basis systematically review the different components of their operation, then they will start to learn to listen and respond better to the issues that arise when they do that assessment. Yeah. So when you think about blind spots, I mean, when you're driving 100 miles an hour and redlining your business. This and you're just doing all the things. It's you know you miss a lot because you're going so doggone fast. So what would you say that a CEO would see when they slowed down that they wouldn't see if they were going at their normal pace? Well, this is the great thing about having your leadership team. If you think about

Speaker 1  10:15  
the

Eric Smith  10:15  
pit stop as a chance for the CEO or owner to stop and be able to connect with their team. This is where other people are trained in other areas, and no CEO can be good at everything, right? I mean, they they may have understanding of things, but they really a good CEO is going to have people who are expert at things that they're not. And that pit stop picture is really being able to stop, slow down, and get input from the team and say, hey, I noticed some things. Are you aware of that? They can either fix it themselves, or they have an opportunity to engage the team and think about you know transformations and changes that they can make. So I think that's that's one of the key elements. Is it's a chance to take those take those breaks, connect with the team that they've worked hard to bring around them, and leverage the expertise that sometimes goes wasted. Yeah, you have a five-point filter that you use. It's kind of an alignment matrix that you help leaders to simplify their world into five basic areas: sales, ops, people, finance, and ministry. Would you be open to just kind of walking us through what that looks like? Yeah, absolutely. So this is a surprisingly simple, and I think that sometimes simplicity is overlooked as valuable, but it's a it's a a simple way to assess on if you're doing this on a regular basis to look at the five key areas of what really makes a business run. So you talked about revenue. This is areas around sales and marketing. You look at your product lineup and how you're managing that. You're also it's also your customer relationships that you're developing, either the new customers or current customers or current customers in the process of of becoming a customer, and so that's that's a key first key area. After that, we move into the operations management, and this is really around maybe supply chain fulfillment, looking at your technology stack, administration and operation of the business, followed by organizational development is the third area, and this is again the people side of it, right? And this is my background was focused on. In who are you recruiting? How successfully are you able to attract the right talent, get them on board, and effective Team players, as well as helping them grow their skills and developing careers within your organization, and and then for the CEOs, the the last one of the org dev is the succession planning. At at some point, having people in your organization who can take over either for planned exits or for unplanned exits. Before you

David Bush  13:02  
would you mind sharing that that document with this so that we can just take a look at

Eric Smith  13:05  
it? Oh yeah, sure.

David Bush  13:09  
And I'm imagining people can get a copy of this by reaching out to you. You'll send them a copy of it.

Eric Smith  13:14  
Absolutely, be happy to share this. So you can see here. Here's our five points: revenue, ops, organizational, financial, and ministry. The ministry is the interesting part, right? That that's sort of the new one. We were just going over org, and next one is our financial management around goals and projection metrics, your control systems, and then the fifth one is ministry, and this is unique to C 12 in that we are looking to connect with people of faith of the Christian faith who are interested in figuring out that there may be something more, another element to their purpose in running and leading a business, and that's that's the ministry aspect. And we've got questions and issue questions we can help go through. This is just even a quick assessment, but there's more deep information we can we have to pull more content through to help you understand what this is looking like, but each one of this is systematic and organized, which is really the the essential that I talked about earlier, where CEOs are taking the time to come in and on a regular cadence take a health assessment of the basic operations of their business. That is the the the practice that is so often overlooked, and is so essential. So, if this show is resonating with you and you're ready to take action because you want to scale your business faster, smarter with more AI and technology and less labor, check out BDR AI. We help entrepreneurs and executive sales leaders to automate the grind of prospecting, so you can focus your time on closing deals and growing revenue where you should be spending your time. With AI-powered data, digital outreach automation, and done-for-you prospecting systems, you'll connect with more qualified leads, book more appointments, and.

David Bush  15:00  
Build predictable revenue without adding more hours to your week or the week of your staff. Visit BDR today and discover how our AI Prospect Finder and digital BDR agents can help you to build your pipeline and your profits. Visit BDR AI, where business builders learn how to automate and scale their playbook. Yeah, you have these assessments, and they oftentimes are great opportunities for self-reflection, and it kind of gives you that aha moment. How do you translate the aha moment to the application of actually improving their driving capacity? Is that a coaching, or is it more of a discussion as a peer advisory group, I'm curious.

Eric Smith  15:44  
Well, especially in the in this in this context in the C12 context, with peer advisory, absolutely, it is the the discussion amongst say drivers. Right, they're they're driving their different machines, they're different race tracks to have different teams, but it's through that unique opportunity to talk among peers about how they actually go through and translate ideas into practice, and there's nothing like other drivers who are going through the same thing, but maybe in a different industry, a different size business is is some can sometimes be a huge advantage. We talk to people who are leaders of you know multi you know $250 million businesses, and they're like, they could be listening to someone who's running a $10 million business. But that person can have a unique perspective to say, "What about this? Have you tried something like that? This is something I'm working on. And then through coaching, obviously, as you mentioned, one-on-one opportunities to make it really personal are is one of the other advantages of what peer advisory and especially the C 12 model provides is that direct one on one coaching experience. Beyond that, I think it's also important that they have industry experience, have industry connection. So it's one of the things that a lot of times CEOs are looking for is people within their industry that they can be honest with, that are that are not that are they're not competing with, and the beauty of C12 is that we have over you know 5000 members around the world, and there there are people in in your industry that you can connect with and connect with through the C12 network, where you can actually share industry-specific challenges and work through translating some of these common ideas into practical practical actions that you can take and experiment with.

David Bush  17:34  
I know that you shared previously when we were kind of planning for the webinar that a lot of CEOs get caught in the technician trap, where they're constantly trying to fix the engine and they're you know doing the tune-ups on the engine rather than getting into a seat where they're designing a better overall team and a better overall performance car, high performance high performance car. They're just getting so caught up in the thing that they know and the thing that's comfortable. How do you talk them through that process of giving something up that they have always known and they've always been excellent or unique at it to maybe taking on a role that they haven't had a lot of success because they haven't been that been forced to become that high performance CEO, business growth minded, you know, faith leader, so to speak. You know, I find this for to be particular a particular importance and an application for those who are

Eric Smith  18:30  
in smaller but growing businesses. These are they are closer to the reality of having to stay as sort of the the operator, right? They're they're still hands on with much of the much of many of the aspects of their business, and they're starting to redefine or expand their thinking about what their role as a CEO and a leader is. For those who are running large large businesses, they've had to get to that place already, where they've learned the value of trying to be a technician on every front, and that what they're doing is better better for them to be architects, better for them to be thinking about the design of the system rather than to be the hands-on mechanic fixing everything. That's a shift in their identity, and it can be very difficult and hard for them as they move into something that is new, and when anything is new, we always know it's a little uncomfortable. We feel out of our element, but again, there's nobody else other than the leader going to spur them. It needs to be spurred on to do something to take their business to the next level, and through that, the concepts that we have around delegation, we talked about the Second Timothy two two idea around delegation that is that is critical where they start to see the value of other people taking on the roles that they once held so dear and did so well themselves.

David Bush  19:53  
Yeah, I want to talk a little bit more about that because that whole speed of the leader dictates the speed of the team. You know, the the law of the lid. In the whole glass ceiling that becomes our rate-limiting factor is our ability to grow into who we've been called to be, do, and have, and allowing others to do the same, and not being protective of the things that maybe we have a lot of pride around. So, talk a little bit more about the Timothy two two rule.

Eric Smith  20:21  
Well, this is-it's not a again. It-it may be couched in more complexity than it is, but this is really about a story of a a wise leader in the Bible, Paul. We know is in his letter to Timothy is giving him some helpful and practical instructions about how to be an effective leader at that time in the church, and he calls him out, and he just says, "It's it's important for you to be delegating to faithful men the tasks that that you're doing. And so, in that in that short but powerful admonition, we see Paul giving Timothy the charge of first identifying and finding men and women who have capabilities are proving themselves faithful and skilled at doing doing the job, and then not just identifying them, but then starting to impart to them so that there can be a amplification of of impact by by giving over these tasks, these important, essential tasks to people who have proven themselves capable and faithful, which again, any leader is looking for that in their business, right? And they quickly identify people who can do it well and are doing well consistently, and that is something that a CEO can sometimes, if they're focused on doing a lot of things themselves, sometimes they're not as active in their identification and handing off of things to other people who are going to be able to help expand the reach. So, what would you what would you say is your best coaching to a

David Bush  22:00  
person that's having a hard time letting go and delegating to be able to expand their ability to focus on the things that really matter the most to the organization.

Eric Smith  22:10  
Well, I probably start with a number of questions about what it is. You know, like what is it about they're afraid of? You know, what is it they're what are the concerns that they have because they're real and we're human and we don't want to just push them and make them peanut butter over things that are really important to them, and so I would I would start in my my coaching is just to be able to start uncovering what it is it that presents as as a problem to them doing that. Explore ideas of where potential delegation could be beneficial, and start working with them to paint a picture that makes sense in their world around how they can experiment, and not all of a sudden hand off things to people that really shouldn't be doing things, but making small adjustments in their their their learning around how this happens and how it can happen well. So it would be a mutual discovery conversation where we're not just, hey, this is there's one way to do it. Everybody's in a different world, but what's one way that you think you could learn to do this in a way that is presenting just the the amount of risk that you can handle by handing something off to someone else?

David Bush  23:18  
Well, I love the the the play on words of the the word beliefs. The word lie is right in the middle of those beliefs, and one of the biggest lies that CEOs tell themselves is they say, when things slow down, when this project is finished, right? And then maybe they tell their spouse this, or they tell their team, or they tell the the person that's mentoring them, hey, as soon as this is finished, then I'll take a pit stop. But before that happens, something typically breaks because it never actually gets to the point where they take the time. So, how do you help CEOs to break through that lie? Is it just to get them to a point of accountability and say you know it's important enough to take a break every quarter or do you negotiate that with them or how do you work with them on that?

Eric Smith  24:12  
Well, again, each each person is made unique and different. There are some people who are going to be able to go longer and faster. Other people are going to require more breaks. So this isn't a one-size-fits-all approach. This is really about having unique conversations with people who are made uniquely, and trying to figure out ways in which they can start to see opportunities for for themselves that makes sense, rather than feeling like they have to look and operate like everybody else or somebody somebody else on on the social internet, you know, kind of bandwagon that's promoting something. Learning to understand who you are and how God has made you is probably the first. Big step in being able to start crafting a plan and a solution that really works for you and the organization that you've helped to build.

David Bush  25:09  
I really enjoyed your concept about stewardship versus ownership. Would you mind sharing that a little bit with everybody about this, you know, flip of a script and how you see things is how you do things, and how stewardship can really free up a lot of stress and anxiety and worry and other things that can kind of oftentimes go with taking full ownership of everything and feeling like that it's all up to you to make it happen.

Eric Smith  25:36  
Well, this is this is an interesting topic in our world of our marketing world and Madison Avenue, you know, accumulation and the idea of shifting from owner to steward could be a really foreign concept for people, and I would is is not one that's light or small. And so I would I bring this up in a very I want to, in a very soft and sensitive way, because this is at the core of what you believe, and is not just a concept. I think that can be had had that can be implemented in in a vacuum. And the reason why is stewardship is a is a biblical concept that there is a God that exists and who is active in this world, who in fact is the owner of all things, and when instead of us usurping that ownership, and in a sense sort of plagiarizing the credit for how things happen, it's a position of one of humility, but also one in which that a steward is looking to please please the owner of of of the property. So I think of you know in Jesus' time he talks about a vineyard owner who gives gives his stewards talents and goes away and is expecting a return on those. They come back and some some are able to provide a good return, and others not. And he praises in this story, in this parable, the the the vineyard owner is able to praise those who have been able to take their talents and really multiply them. And so, I think the idea, the the relief that one can have in thinking about stewardship and ownership is that who is ultimately responsible, and then also who is who is ultimately active and involved? Is this only up to me? Am I am I the only place the buck stops? Is there really no one else but me? Sometimes we we like to think that it makes us feel good, but it isn't necessarily the most healthy way, from a biblical worldview perspective. And there's a great relief in being able to bring a return to someone who's in fact worthy and and in ownership of all things, including our businesses, our families, all our resources, and our time. I'm curious to know your perspective on when you have an employee that's underperforming, or maybe you would consider them toxic to the culture of what you're trying to build. But then you also have this concept of business as a ministry. How do you run an efficient, Profitable business as a ministry, but not actually have it to be run like it's a church. If that makes sense,

David Bush  28:30  
because you're trying to run this for-profit entity, and there's times when people need to be career planned. You need to make hard decisions, and it's not necessarily where you're excommunicating them from the the church, it's just not a good fit for them to be in there. So I'm just kind of curious of how that plays out in a faith faith context.

Eric Smith  28:52  
It's a great question, David. This is where I spend a lot of my time as HR dealing with how organizations recruit, develop talent, and and if sometimes we get it wrong, sometimes organizations miss out and kind of miss on making the fit. The other thing is that people change and organization change. What could be a great fit at some point can just turn into something where it's not fitting, you know, with no intent on either party, the organization, or the individual. One of the things that I've noticed in my my experience is that when there was when there was a when there was not a good fit, we would spend tons of time trying to figure out ways to support that person, shift things, give them supports and aids, so to try and get them successful. And I think most times businesses are doing that. They're working hard to to support their people. But one thing I noticed is that anybody that moved on from the organization, they always found thriving environments and careers outside of ours, and to stay humble and. Think that you know we're not everything to all people. We have a very unique you know every business has a unique focus, and to try to keep someone in that as they change and as the organization change changes is not realistic nor kind to to people. And moving people on can some is sometimes be the best thing for everybody involved. Hopefully, what we do is we treat people well, you know, through the process, and do right by everybody along that way to do what we can and to have patience and invest. But moving people along, I think thing I learned, I learned in one in my career is we held on to people way too long that weren't a fit, and we weren't serving them. When when I'm I've my advice now to to business leaders is that when that happens, you do some basic things, but don't be afraid to make changes on the team.

David Bush  30:56  
That's great. When you're looking at a

Eric Smith  31:00  
kind of a performance team in a car setting, you know, they know the track, they know the goal, they know the time, they know the distance, they know all the things about the track. How do you use a balanced scorecard that helps a business to know if they're actually winning or if they're just spinning their tires, and looks like that they're driving, but they're just making a bunch of smoke. Well, that's great. That's kind of brings up maybe the the third one of the three assessments that we we use in terms of principles we wanted to cover today. So we had our five Pam, the five point alignment matrix, and our Second Timothy principle on on delegation. One thing that's essential is being able to take that. What you're talking about is sort of this broad step back, right, from the business and go like, are we are we doing it? Is is there anything good happening here? What's going on? And are what is what are what are our goals? And are we are we achieving them? So the five point alignment matrix is a very, in a sense, tactical tool assessment tool. If you do on a regular basis, can keep your fingers have a pulse on elements of the business. But I'd like to share another tool that we use. It's called our try value model, and again, it's simple for a reason to gal leaders to have a clear and useful model by which they're able to assess whether they're are they going the right direction, and if they're chosen the direction, how are they doing in in meeting their goals? And so we go through this tri value map model, which is three areas: economic, team, and spiritual. So you know, here we look at on the economic side, you have EBITDA and as as one of the core as the numerator, and so it pulls in the direct finances of the business to see if you're on track. We have our team value add, which is going through a number of questions to look at how how the people are doing within the org, how how engaged are they, how their performance is, are we in fact providing avenues for which our people can succeed and grow and develop and bring value to their their careers, but also bring value to the business, and then the third and simple and often overlooked one for for those of Christian faith is their spiritual value add? This is super important. God wants their spiritual life to be showing up in all areas, and so to have a direction about how their spiritual beliefs take form and shape within an organization is essential. So this tri value model provides a great way. And again, each one of these. This is just the initial. There's deep work we can do behind each one of these models to be able to start seeing. Hey, are we on the right track? Is this is this makes sense at all for us to be doing? And make adjustments along the way. Yeah. When you go into your organization conversations or when you're talking to your CEOs, what's the most common blind spot that you've found? Like, what's the area where it's just like, duh, or aha, like it's an aha moment for most of the business leaders that you're working with? You know, I don't know that it's. I can say there's one thing that my my interaction with CEOs is that they all have them, but they're in different areas. I mean, I think about one of the things we like to do is look at some of the personality instruments that we can use. And certain people, we have people who are super personable, outgoing, and their blind spots are going to be perhaps on the operation side, on the practical side, and we're going to have we have other CEOs that I work with that are you know super focused on on process, and they're struggling on the people you know, and they're and and the blind spots are different. So I can't say there's one area, and I think that's the uniqueness of having a peer advisory. Environment and someone who is looking across the piers, being able to say, "Hey, we are different. There's no one answer.

Eric Smith  35:08  
What we, what you need, is environment to be able to be yourself, share yourself, and have people who are going to reflect back honestly to you, and also using tools and content to take a tour through the garden of areas, and that's part of what C12 does. Is we have a very methodical way of addressing all of the five-point alignment matrix topics, as well as the tri-value model that we do over the course of a year. That all the CEOs are going to have a chance to sort of shine the light in areas that they may not be paying attention to. So sorry, it's kind of a cop out of an answer. I'm not there. There is no one answer, and that's that speaks to the need of having an environment and content that will drive you to expose areas that are or blind spots.

David Bush  35:57  
Yeah, and I don't know if anybody comes to mind off top of your head, but would you be open to just sharing maybe a story or two of individuals without sharing their details of their name or company or anything else, but just kind of giving us a little bit of a glance of how you've been able to take maybe somebody that just wasn't performing at their highest level of capacity, whether it be any one of those three different areas that you just talked about in the Tri Value model, and what were some of the the wins that happened in year one, year two, year three? I'm just curious to know what the impact has been from some of the work that you've been doing with these CEOs.

Eric Smith  36:37  
Sure, happy to. There's one individual who on two fronts, I'll kind of share on two different areas, sort of blind spots. He built he's built the business by hand. He's been out, you know, very much hands on in all areas, and yet he knows that he's really good at sales, and that's where he he loves he loves the people aspect, the relationships, so he's he's sort of he's happy in that role, and he's successful in that role, and so one one of the things we've been talking about is what are the what are the areas the things that he's not he's been missing by sort of taking the the the the path that feels right for him and actually produces results, but when it comes back to actually leading the business and doing organizational development, that's the area where he is-he has not taken on. He-he likes to sell projects. He doesn't necessarily want to deal with the people in his business and in growing their careers and and developing them. So he's had some aha moments along that front, where he's now using many of the tools that C12 provides in terms of gathering feedback, engaging with them, way practical ways in which he can structure his leadership team meetings. He's now organizing them in a much different way, and also his his all company meetings that he he has, he's really thinking about them in a whole new way, structuring the agenda, pulling in his leadership team for their input. He's doing organizational development now, almost almost by chance, almost as a side effect, as of of him stepping in and learning to ask new questions and being humble, but taking the role of instigating change. He also the second area that he's been he's been having some some great success on is on that spiritual value add. He never really never really occurred to him that his business was a channel for providing spiritual relief to people and hope through the gospel, and he's taking small steps now. He's identified people within his organization who he believes has talent. So again, he's sort of pulling on that org dev front, starting to see the talent in other people, and he's now applying that in the spiritual side of his business, starting to activate them to do things that people are naturally inclined to do, and he's having amazing results because people are like, I never knew you cared, and I would be this would be like I would be overjoyed, you know, to be able to take on some of these responsibilities, and I never thought I'd be able to do that in in my job, and so he's just having some incredible breakthroughs now, albeit small steps. I mean, it's it's not blowing up. He he's have he keeps his business running, but he's exploring new boundaries and new frontiers of his own role and his old ability to to bring positive change, so that's one.

David Bush  39:46  
That's great. Yeah, success without fulfillment is oftentimes you know misery, right? I mean, so having this fulfillment piece be added into his overall success is obviously making him more significant and. Lives of other people, and there's something to be said about feeling significant and where you're actually making a difference in the lives of human beings, rather than just making a profit and shifting from that mindset of this is my business and I own it and this is what we're going to do to really becoming a steward and helping other people and being a servant of other people, and that has been a proven way to see a lot of different businesses to grow and thrive. And you've obviously had some experience with that. Is there any other thing that you wanted to share about that?

Eric Smith  40:30  
Well, I just think it's interesting that these things, these topics, the ways we look at them, like this tri value around economic team and spiritual, they're not in a bubble. They're not isolated levers that we we pull on, they have they're interdependent and related. And when oftentimes in a business role as CEOs, we focus primarily on that economic value add. We're looking at the the end, you know, our profit, our gross revenue, and our profit coming out of that. Well, oftentimes we're just looking at how do we how can we tune that engine, that specific part of the engine. But when you are investing in your people, and they're becoming supported and being in the right role or finding the right people for the right role, and you're empowering them and delegating them, you're you're that has an impact on your economic value add. They are going to be part of that economic engine, and same same with the economic image. We talk if we say that if if there's no margin, there's no mission. If you're running a business and you don't have extra profit, you're not going to be able have the money. And we ran into this. I ran into this multiple times where we wanted to bless our our employees, but we realized like, hey, we've got to make more money. We've got to be more profitable because benefits and experiences and learning and tools and all things that you want to have for your team can't be had without profit. So there's a point to the profit. There's a point to the economic value that it allows you to fund the kind of team investment and spiritual investment. And so these these concepts are not again isolated. They're interrelated. And when people start seeing that it becomes funner and more engaging into to experiment with ways in which you can start expanding activity and success in these other areas of of your business other than just the economics.

David Bush  42:16  
That's so great. Well, I know that there's people here that are watching this video that are just curious to know more about what it is that you do with C 12. Would you give us kind of a high level overview of what it looks like to be a part of C 12 and what would be a process that they would look at if they were interested?

Eric Smith  42:35  
Sure. Yeah, C 12 has we have somewhat of unique perspective on the peer advisory role within the the industry. There's a number of other types of organizations that that offer similar services, but C12 is unique, and that is it is the largest faith based business peer advisory organization in the world. So we have over 30 years' experience in developing processes, tools, content, curriculum, best practices that are continually honed and developed for for value and impact. An experience. The members. The primary thing that a member would experience is our ongoing monthly meetings, and we spend time in a dedicated pull-out retreat kind of experience, where we, as as a group, go through MBA level business curriculum. We go through ministry curriculum and allow them also each each member once a year will go into a deep dive in their business and get a chance to get almost like a board. I mean, that's kind of what you know. You can kind of think about, you know, CEOs may or may not have a board. If they're larger, they tend to have that. If they're not, they're doing it all on their own. But even if you have a board or not, having a a board of of similar people who are there just for your benefit, they have no other agenda, but then to see you succeed and thrive as a person and a business leader-that is-that is really kind of at the core of the experience. It's not about me. In fact, you know, if I'm talking too much, I'm not actually providing the right kind of service to to my members. What a member really gets to experience is the wisdom and insight of their peers. Now, in addition to the monthly meetings, I'll provide one-on-one coaching every month, and and then that will tie into as well all kinds of resources that we have available. Again, we spend over a million dollars a year in developing curriculum and content that is relevant and honed and continually being refined, so that it's that it's timely in the market, and that it's receptive and effective. So between the monthly meetings, the monthly coaching, that is the majority. Again, we have online resources, we have industry for. That I mentioned earlier, ways in which you can connect with other people in your industry and conferences. So those those are the main things that one would one would experience as a C 12 member.

David Bush  45:11  
Yeah. So what would be the next step if somebody wanted to learn more? Would be to reach out to you on the contact information we're going to provide with the recording, or is there a specific process that they need to go through.

Eric Smith  45:23  
Yeah, it all starts with a simple conversation, and I like to just first of all get to know get to know each other. We just want to find out where where we're at, and just start a conversation that that the two business leaders are having around you know what what some of the challenges are, what they're trying to solve, and if what C 12 has to offer really makes sense to them, so there's no there's no you know set process. It's it's through dialog and conversation.

David Bush  45:53  
Yeah. Well, we're so glad that you joined us here today, and I'm so glad that everybody that watched live or watched the recording got a chance to hear some of these truths and amazing wisdom facts about what it takes to be successful and how you can end up helping them to become more successful and significant through the work that you're doing at C12. I want to end with something that's kind of like my favorite part of the Cars movie, and it's when Lightning McQueen gets back into the final race, and he's racing around, and he's kind of feeling like it's just not worth it, and it's not, and it's not coming together for him. And if you remember the the movie, but Doc Paul Newman gets on the radio, and he's the old Hudson Hornet to the guy that won, you know, three piston cups, and he starts talking to him like a mentor. And I just, you know, wanted to have an experience about Eric Smith mentoring the CEO that's watching this right now without knowing them personally. What kind of words of encouragement, of guidance, just helping them to see a lighted path in front of them, maybe they're going through challenges relationally and with finances or anything that's just maybe needing some encouragement from Eric Smith. What would you say to him?

Eric Smith  47:11  
Well, I think one of the most common issues that leaders have is the isolation that they can feel. They go to work and they have to be very careful about what they present and reveal and share with people at work. They may have a few other, you know, friends in in leadership businesses. They may not share the same kind of faith. So having knowing, I just encourage that you do not have to go this alone. And in fact, when you seek a multitude of of counselors, you're going to find wisdom and insights and support that are going to bless you and give you insights and encouragement that is is in a sense priceless. We have we have members who will who will fly across the country for our monthly meetings because they've built relationships with people, they've moved on, but or they're they're traveling and they'll they'll figure out ways to to to get together with people because the isolation that leaders can feel can be overwhelming and it can be it can wear you out and it's just it's just so sad. You God has made you and gifted you in a unique and special way, and there are people like myself and other people who are part of these organizations that want you to succeed and to do well and to thrive and and be fulfilled in what in in what what you've built and who God has surrounded you with. So that's my encouragement. Is man, don't go solo. Reach out, whether it's C 12 in the end or not. There, I'm here to provide help. If I can provide connections and and a network for you, that would be a blessing to me. So this does conversation doesn't have to end in C 12 membership. I would just like to be able to serve you, however I can, to help you feel like you don't have to do this alone. Thanks, I

David Bush  49:08  
appreciate it, Eric. There were a few comments about pricing. I imagine that you'll just discuss that with them privately, or is there any information you want to share on pricing for services?

Eric Smith  49:18  
Yeah, I would love to, you know, first understand kind of what they're looking at and talk a little bit about their situation. So happy to have a pricing conversation directly if that's something people are interested to find out more about.

Speaker 2  49:29  
Great.

David Bush  49:30  
Well, thanks everybody for joining us live or watching the recording, and thanks to Eric for giving us his great wisdom and experience and education on how we can all benefit from a pit stop and win the race. Thanks, everybody. Have a great day. Thanks for tuning in to the Business Builders Playbook. If this episode gave you some plays that you can start running in your business today, hit subscribe and share with another revenue leader who's tired of the pipeline grind. Building predictable revenue isn't. Something you figure out alone. Whether you're looking to automate your prospecting with BDR AI, or you just want to talk through the growth challenges you're facing, reach out. We help business leaders just like you to build systems that actually scale. And if you're ready to stop being your company's highest-paid prospector, let's have a conversation. Reach out to us at BDR AI. Until next time, let's keep building.