Focus Friday: Journey of a Successful CEO - Interview with Craig Goodliffe

Welcome to the breakfast leadership show where we interview global thought leaders on business leadership and life here's your host keynote speaker best-selling author and chief burnout officer of the breakfast leadership network michael levitt welcome back i've got craig good life online craig how are you fantastic thanks for having me here i'm really excited Thanks for being here. I'm really looking forward to this conversation.

So why don't you share a little bit about you and what you're up to, and then we'll dive into the conversation.

Well, the big problem in the world that I'm working to solve is creating jobs for people and helping people be able to hire someone who's affordable to do a good job. Because as you know, right now in our country, unemployment rates are low. And if you look at federal minimum wage, some areas, $7.25 an hour, people can't afford to work for that.

It'd be hard to survive. And for some entrepreneurs building their business, some of the listeners right here, they go ahead and they're like, I need help, but where do I go? I can't afford the minimum, let alone what it takes for someone to make a great living. So I help entrepreneurs and people hire from all over the world, people where minimum wage is a fantastic wage. Because in some places it just is. So that's what I do. That's why I'm here.

Got about 3,500 employees, 21 different franchise owners.

And I love, love, huge fan of your podcast because things about leadership, leadership is everything. Great leadership make organizations great. And the absence of leadership is usually the undoing of most organizations.

Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I know we had discussed a bit in the pre-show just about showing up, and you made a really good observation for, I think, a lot of people in this world is when we put ourselves out there in front of this camera and upload this video to social media or podcast platform or whatever, we're doing our best to put the best foot forward. But you know what? We all are dealing with challenges. Leaders are showing up when they don't feel like it.

They're beaten down. They've got issues at home. Maybe they've got some financial issues going on. Maybe there's a sick loved one or competition's bad or they're tossing and turning trying to figure out, okay, what is the division that we're going to close because we need to for financial reasons. And that's not fun. You know, I've been part of many things like that over my career.

And it's why Tums does so well is because we, you know, people just, you know, start tossing those things down like it's Halloween and you're eating the stash that your parents cleared for you to eat. That's why all the kids are just zombies the next day at school, if they go. But just your insights on that, and especially, too, with organizations that are looking to grow.

Grow and you need people to grow you know we haven't ai'd everything yet so we need people and a lot of organizations unfortunately just can't afford they want to you know i talked to i talked to owners all the time and leaders again i want to bring on teams i'd love to pay this person a whole lot more than i'm paying but i can't because our revenue and the cost of running things are there and i know a lot of leaders you know they're not even taking a salary themselves.

And they're like, no, I want to bring, I want to bring this person in. And I said, sometimes it's like, well, you know what, maybe I'll do it. Bring in some people that have that skill set from outside, you know, a 40 foot view, you know, look around and see what's available.

So it's awesome that, that you're doing these services. So what motivated you to, you know, to launch this business? It was kind of like building an airplane while it was flying. So me personally back in a previous life, and there's a lot of hot topics in the media right now around national association realtors and this big settlement thing. And back in 2017, about the time you started your podcast, I went ahead and had a real estate business, sold 203 homes. We were number one in two counties.

I went ahead and I had a great administrative team who were all from the Philippines. I had a thriving business, but what people really was excited about is I had nights and weekends off. And in 2018, I said, I'm going to create some jobs and I'm going to give entrepreneurs weekends off and time with their family back. They're going to have affordable leverage. So that's what started me on this journey. And we've created some jobs.

And on the pre-show, we were talking because every one of the guests so far, professional, awesome, they know their stuff. And when I'm listening to it, I'm probably like most listeners where it's like, I'm not that. And while I've managed to do some cool stuff and stuff like that, I mean, I know what it's like when it's your, I'm going to give you an example from my own world. We've got an organization.

We finally went ahead and we got to the place where COVID hits and we're like, oh no, the world's coming to an end. And we had just came through another bad situation with PayPal where it was coming to an end. And we finally get on the other side of it, and we find out that COVID was actually our element. When it was work-from-home jobs, people were willing to take a look at companies like ours to help hire remote. And we actually started making money, which was kind of cool.

And then summer of 2021 happened and my house caught fire on 4th of July. Crazy. Yeah. And so here's the irony. And this is kind of a funny thing, Michael. Our first meeting every Friday morning, I wanted to have everyone fired up. I want to have them excited, ready to go, motivated, passionate, just that fire. So we called the meeting every Monday morning, fire. And our team did this cool intro for the meeting. We met Hurtfully on Zoom. The night before, my house catches fire.

I'm running up and down the street the night before, wearing nothing but a towel like a maniac, getting my family out of the house as we watch it, you know. And we go back in, we go to bed. And the irony of having to wake up at four o'clock in the morning to be in front of everybody at 6 a.m. For this meeting called fire. And they don't want to hear something that's going to cause them to worry. Because your people that work with you, they're friends. They care.

They want to know. They're compassionate. They're human. And if you say my house caught fire last night, they're going to go, whoa, slow down.

Are you okay let's talk about this and you're going to bring distractions to your organization i didn't want to do that and so we had this meeting called fire i'm kind of laughing a little bit my own eyes one going oh no we have some personal life problems we have to fix, so a little bit of irony and the company here it is it's growing 2021 then right after i buy a condo because i'm a smart person need to go ahead and find a place to

live what happens we cleaned it up there's this drain outside somehow got covered it rained really bad the place flooded just so you know insurance companies love me by the way in case it wasn't obvious. And here again, I didn't tell everyone house caught fire and that I'm living with the in-laws, you know, and my family is. And now I'm dealing with flood issues and business. When you already are doing everything you can, you're doing everything.

You're exhausting yourself day in and day out. You still have these personal problems you got to deal with like a normal human being. And me, I'm looking at all the other leaders and going, well, they have problems like this, but they don't talk about it and they keep going. So that's what I'm going to do. So you can see how this is a recipe for success. Of course it is. And I think it shows that you're human and not just an autobot executive and does this and polished, which is great.

You can do that, but you had some, what we like to call in psychology world, a significant emotional event followed up with another one, and you're like, the ship still has to sail. Now, we might have to be in a tugboat for a bit while they fix the ship, but we're still moving forward. but you making sure the team is aware of it. And it's, it's a, it's a fine balance for some people, but, but, but it really, it really depends on who the team is.

And, you know, and everybody, and especially the team of that size, you know, You have to kind of level set thing and say, okay, my house caught fire. I'm okay. My family's okay. Thankfully, we're relocating. Business will continue as usual. There may be some disruptions as I address some things, but I will keep it to a minimum so you can continue to do the work that you're doing because we all want that.

I find that work, and even though you hear people complaining about it, but work can be a really, really good escape. Because a lot of times, unfortunately, I hate hearing this with people. It's like, I need an escape from work. It's like, well, then you're not enjoying your work if you need to escape it. And it's like, so you got to come to grips with that. And okay, what is making you want to escape it? Because there might be something you're doing yourself.

It's easy to blame the company. But you can go to another company. And he goes, what? Oh, they're doing the same thing. Hmm. Okay. There's something maybe a little closer to home they need to address. But when you're going through things like that, it's important in my assessment anyway, to let people know what's going on. At the time of this recording, just over four weeks from my mom passing away. So my brother and I are dealing with estate stuff.

He works in an industry that he needs to be there, not having a whole lot of time off because of the work that he does. And my work, of course, is the same thing. There's things that deliverables and shows and all that kind of stuff. stuff. So for me, it's like, okay, you know, I saw like, for example, this interview today, I'm like, all right, awesome. You know, and I literally had, you know, half an hour before was filling out more paperwork for estate stuff.

So it's like, okay, good. I get to go do something fun. And, you know, it's, it's just one of those things where long story short.

You got to continue living. Life is very important. Work and life should not be a separate thing. You are one entity. You up and flow with that. And when you are your true self and you're able to do all of that, you can navigate through those peaks and valleys a whole lot easier to the point where they're not big peaks and big valleys.

They're like, yeah, I'm sure, you know, when you're on that call, you know, they're talking about, you know, the, you know, your fire call on Monday mornings, you know, if you had like any design logo or something like that, you're probably looking and going, you know, we should probably change the flames in that background drip. Cause I got a new idea what flames look like. Let's, let's maybe tweak, you know, make that a little bit more blue.

That's a little more orange and it's doing this thing. And even though we don't have smell-o-vision yet, I mean, come on, AI, we've had everything else. I want to be able to smell an apple pie if I see it on the screen. We can't be that far away from it. So let's go on that. We're like, okay, yeah, do all your work. Oh, that's cool. I want to go, hey, I want a piece of apple pie.

Boom you know it's and like now like on star trek generation not you know not you know having to call uber or something and wait a half an hour and pay 40 bucks for that slice of pie but just saying everybody says oh it's it's it's so much easier to eat out than cook at home i'm like, huh yeah don't get me started on that one i saw that the other day and i'm like where are you eating because i i haven't come across that but you know should have them deter and say okay what's what's going on?

How can you save so much money eating out? That doesn't make sense. But anyhow, long-winded story to say that it's important to let people know, not only from a. They get to know you as a leader, but also if you are having difficulties or you're struggling a little bit or you're off for a couple of days or something like that, they know.

So it's not second guessing you're not getting the gossip chain rolling you're not getting all of that other stuff going on in the background because they see that time and time again where people start speculating what's wrong you know and and what happens is they come up with their own stories and that can infiltrate the culture and all of a sudden your performance so your team starts to drop because they think you're closing a division you know like no actually we're expanding it

but but we're just negotiating a lease and we got to keep quiet about it. So, you know, kind of like what Disney did when he got acquired all the property in Orlando. It's like, don't let anybody know. Cause he, he got that land cheap. There you go. Absolutely.

So what's next? What do you think? And I'm not going to ask, what do you see in five years? Because five years ago, we certainly didn't see what's happened in the five-year plan. I can't predict five months from now, much less five years. That's just not an applicable question to ask.

But where do you see things growing, especially in your industry and your field as more and more organizations start to realize that the talent pool is on this whole big blue thing floating around in the sky and not to limit yourself to just your jurisdiction because there's some amazingly talented individuals across this planet and you give them an opportunity.

And like we said in the pre-show you know you're changing their lives you know they're they're living really well and boy does that make me sleep well at night when i can do that that you're helping people you know better themselves and in return obviously they're they're providing a service to you and your clients and everybody else but where do you see things over the next few years yeah after this it's going to be hiring

people primarily from the philippines to go Go ahead and invent smell-o-vision right now, just based on this interaction. Because if you and I think it's a good idea, then I think everybody else will too. So maybe it's something you got your sound bar, you got your screen, you got your smell thing that's just going to make it happen. But if I don't go invent that after this, then my next plan is to go ahead and work on going ahead and having better basic training for people on how to be

efficient in their roles and their positions. Because there's some things they have to know that's essential information. And there's some stuff that's like the nice to have. Some stuff for their position, it is like oxygen to the company, baby. And you cannot go without it. Some stuff, it's like going to the bathroom. It can wait a little bit. It's still important. It needs to happen. It's like taxes.

And just like taxes and going to the bathroom, if you delay it long enough, you're doing a little crap every month, right? So it's going ahead and assessing though, what are the important, the impatient needs needs of the position and making sure people understand that and where they need to be innovative, especially with ourselves as AI comes in. Because as you look at what AI is going to bring and all of its capabilities

and things, there's a lot that it's not going to do. There's a lot of things it's not going to replace. And I think for a lot of people, especially in our company, it's knowing how to work with tools like that to create the best product for the end user, whether it's their client or whether it's an actual customer out there. But I mean, really, that's the name of the game we're in. Who can provide a better experience with a combination of resources at our fingertips?

And the more you can enable people to do that, the more jobs you create. And that's kind of what we do and what we're doing.

That's beautiful. And I think the experience, I think that's the key word is I think about organizations or businesses that I visit and some are generic. I'm going to get the same type of service, but there are those few that I will encounter.

And the more I find them, the more I gravitate to them is it's an experience to go there, whether it's to eat something, a coffee shop or an office supply store, or, you know, even if I'm picking up something from the computer store, you know, it's like, well, I go with a big box one or am I going to go with the local guy down the street? Great. I'm going to go with the local guy because I know what the impact is. It's a shorter supply chain impact type of thing for that individual.

And they're going to let me know about something comes up or say, hey, you know, we got this in and you were looking at it before. Do you want it now? And I'm not getting that from a big box store. So you're going to go or someone just they care about you more or they make you feel about and you care more about them because they care more about you. Yeah, and I think that's in this whole thing where... I like saying this, the social media has made us more anti-social in a lot of ways.

I think getting back to the basics of just getting to know people and talking with them and understanding what they do. I had a conversation yesterday with somebody that's a clinical director in one of the big hospital networks that's by me. And just having a conversation about what they're seeing right now. You know, that, you know, I told them I didn't envy them over the last few years because it hasn't been fun for the health care industry, as an example.

But what are they seeing now? You know, what are some of the challenges they're facing? What you know, what how are they approaching it? You know, how are they leveraging technology? And even to the point where they were talking about, you know, 3D implants and they work in a cardiac unit.

And there's actually a way to do a 3D scan of the heart and, you know, the other arteries around and all of that, where they can, there's one company apparently that can generate, you know, the 3D part that they need to replace within a heart that is identical, you know, to that individual.

Individual but unfortunately yeah it's amazing that you can do that it's like this is like we're replacing it with an exact same copy of it but the problem is the turnaround time to generate it from taking the scan having the company make it and doing that is running six to eight weeks and unfortunately a lot of those patients don't last six to eight weeks so yeah so all of a sudden and they've got this part, it's like, okay, we got it. Okay, the patient is deceased.

They can't use it because it won't match because it was designed for them. And so it's like, well, we got to work on technology to get that turnaround a little bit quicker where you can print it in the lab downstairs and have it done, you know, and that's, you know, that's.

You know, just one example of leveraging technology, but, and also, you know, taking in that experience where, you know, if a hospital, if you are a cardiac patient or need a lung transplant or something like that, if there's a hospital network that does that and offers that kind of service and an experience on how to deal with that, you're going to gravitate to that because you're looking at, okay, I can get a new this within three weeks, or I'm going to have to wait six months for this.

And it's, again, you know, same thing with turnaround on the work that, you know, the people that you bring in your team to do. It's like, okay, if I do it myself, it's going to take me, you know, two or three weeks if I get to it. You know, as an executive or a business owner, you're like scrambling because you're doing everything. You know, pro tip, quit doing everything, entrepreneur.

Hire that out. Believe me, I know this is difficult for a lot of entrepreneurs to hear, but you're not as good as you think you are on everything.

Everything there's things you're awesome at and there's things you're not and I see too many times leaders try to do everything and when they do that they're not going to be good at anything so figure out what you're not good at delegate that hire that out to somebody that's a whole lot better and watch what happens to your company yeah that's that's the thing that I've learned and I try to tell people

and bring people like you on to reiterate that because it's so important for for business growth, for you to bring on the right people for the right things you need to get done. And it'll grow your business a lot faster than you doing it by yourself, for sure. No, I agree. In fact, we went ahead and we hit this early on in our business, just to be able to hit our basic, what it takes to find someone you'd call the right person, just someone you could bet your business on.

Right now, numbers, hiring from just the Philippines, just that country, we get on average about 15,000 applications per week, just per week. We do about 5,000 interviews, just the first interviews per week. Just to be able to go ahead and see, is this someone we would trust, one of our clients, to bet their company on this person? 15,000 apply, 5,000 get an interview, less than 200 get a final interview. And of those, we hire less than 100.

Now, when we're hiring from the Philippines, these are people that they are taught English from kindergarten. These are people who've worked in the call center services. services, a lot of times we know we called in, we got some from the Philippines, we got frustrated, they replaced it with AI. I'm taking those people saying, hey, you work customer service, speaking English.

Come on over here. Let's train you with some new skills. And we'll have them go work with a small business owner where they're able to pay them a more than affordable wage. And someone's able to make more than they made in the call center.

But we have to go through 15,000 people just to be able to come out with less than a hundred because it's that hard finding the right right person just the right character just with the right integrity oh and because they're from the philippines right you know internet speed and equipment stuff like that but yeah yeah the vetting process is huge and you know it's not just exclusive to someone applying to be a vice president of finance for a non-profit it's

everything and that's important to do it i know I know a lot of candidates, you'll get frustrated, but 15,000 resumes landing in the system a week, that's going to make the HR team go, ooh. Oh yeah, it's nearly 200 people in that division dealing with resumes and interviews and stuff like that. Yeah.

Because the truth is like, if you're just one person going to fill one job, you got to go ahead and do everything yourself and use your own best judgment. We have to take what other people are going to say. This is their best judgment. And these candidates are going to pass most high level executives, best judgment. Like when they meet with them, they're going to be impressed. They're going to look at their degrees. They're going to look at their experience.

They're going to look at everything about them and they're going to be able to look and say, yes, this is fantastic. person. It's kind of hard trying to mind read 20 small business owners or CEOs what they need and be able to staff to it, but we've kind of been able to do that just a little bit. It's kind of like you, Mr. CEO of Burnout, who saves people from that. You know the symptoms. You know exactly when someone's there, you are the guru of that.

My team, after doing that many applicants and having that many people to choose from, they've been able to become some gurus.

Yeah it's just you know it's even though another ai alan iverson hated practice it's just you keep going at it you get better at it and you know that's what you know happened with me with my personal experience with my my love-hate relationship with burnout i don't love it at all but it definitely created that you understand it better than so many others yeah it demonstrated over and over again yep exactly i know the signs i see it in people i can hear it in their voice it's it's as if you know

i've got some type of special glasses and i can just kind of oh there it is right there you know you pick it out like a blue light trying to find fingerprints it's like there they are i found them so if you've ever had a guest on your podcast they demonstrate all the symptoms if you just let them leave and you haven't told them i mean be honest with me it's okay.

No i know i've i've had somebody that was on my show recently and i'm not going to say anything else because people could try to figure it out but and i could tell and yeah and i i said well here let you i'm gonna send you a copy of my book and they said i already bought it i said well did you read it you know this is kind of being sarcastic with them because i had that relationship, with them like did did you even open the book up it's it's like i'm the audiobook's

coming i'm I'm getting around to it, but you know, it's like, if you want to listen to it or I'll just hop on a zoom call, I'll narrate it here. There. How about that? I'll just do that. We'll have story time. You know, it's, it's, did you have a hard time reading it or did you have a hard time understanding it? Because right now I know we have one of those two problems going on today. Yep. And a lot of people are there. A lot of people are there. I'm guilty of being

in that time and time again. Absolutely. Of course. and in many cases it happens innocently because you're doing things that are right for your business or yourself and just your body goes wait I need a little break you're like I'll get you one don't worry we'll get a break soon and you just kind of blow past that you know even.

A real-life example, I was working on some analytics this afternoon and working on some reports, and I set a timer on my watch, like, okay, in 30 minutes, get out of your chair and move around. Well, the alarm went off, I turned it off, and I continued sitting there for another 10 minutes. And then afterwards, I got up, I'm like, don't do that. You know, it was, you know, kind of self-coaching myself. You set that alarm for a reason.

You follow through because it's for your own benefit. I think too often we go, you know, just a little extra, a little extra, and those little extras start adding up, and it can be really problematic for leaders and everybody in every walk of life.

So it's food for thought for everybody. You know, take care of yourself, speak your truth, be open about the challenges that you're facing in life, and don't try to do it all. You know, I think that's the takeaway that I'm getting from our chat today is just, you know, do those things, and it'll make it easier.

Year it's not going to make it simple there's going to be difficult times but at the end of it, you're going to be able to be refreshed when you hit that next stage instead of being completely worn out yeah absolutely all right craig love this conversation where can people find out more about you and this amazing work you're doing well there's three people with the same name in the world like me one lives in the uk the other lives in south africa i'm the one in the u.s.

So you can go ahead and hit me up on any form of social media or go to cyberbacker.com and say hi to us there if we can help you in any way shape or form but social media is the best way to connect and i always love and encourage people to reach out so we can mastermind and collaborate definitely have that in the show notes so craig thank you for the amazing work you're doing and thank you so much for giving some of your time today to chat with us so really appreciate you i appreciate

Appreciate that, Michael.