Taking Care of Each Other

I asked Sergeant Winters, a veteran paratrooper of the 101st Airborne Division, like those depicted in the HBO mini series Band of Brothers, what was the secret to passing the rigors of training and winning the war? And he responded, well, son, surviving, training, becoming an elite fighter and winning the war all boils down to one teamwork, brotherhood and helping each other. In the 101st Airborne Division, we were more than soldiers. We were a family, a band of brothers. Our training taught us that strength comes from unity, not individual prowess. When jumping into enemy territory, trust in your comrades becomes paramount. Forged through shared hardships and victories in battle. It was our bond that fueled us. We relied on each other's strengths, covered for our weaknesses and fought with a common purpose. The secret to our success? It's simple. Teamwork, brotherhood and an unwavering support for one another. That's what made us elite fighters and brought us victory in the toughest of times. Now I'm convinced that a secret to our success is how much we take care of each other. I'm Curtis. My pal here is Joe. And we are dudes in progress. Hey Joe.

My good friend Kurt. What's going on, pal?

I am looking to you for support again this week.

Well, I'm here for you. I know you got a friend in me. Where's Randy Newman when you need him, right?

I don't know. I know the song.

Don't know much about Randy Newman. You got a friend in me.

That's a Disney. That's a girl.

Of course it's a Disney. You got to throw it in there, don't you?

That's why I heard it.

It's a neat song. All of his stuff is pretty cool. But I especially like that one.

How was your day going today?

It's going pretty well. It's a 06:00 left work to get back to my office in time. My home office here in the palatial Taylor estate and fault some traffic coming wheels a squealing Kurt. And here we are recording.

You know, I thought you might be late when you. You decided we would record tonight.

The original plan was to record Friday morning. Early Friday morning, but late yesterday and confirmed earlier today. I had a meeting dropped on me for early Friday morning at work so I have to handle that. You were gracious enough to turn your plans around again and reschedule for today at six. I know you've got some stuff going on later on today this evening, so appreciate you coming in and taking care of me, my friend.

I appreciate you taking care of me. I was working on something for you this morning. I've had a lot of tasks this week, but I was very pleased to get that little questionnaire you did, or.

You said, we'll talk about that here in a minute. At the end of the show, we'll talk about that.

Oh, cool.

Yeah.

Awesome. Yes. I just feel like I had a lot going on, so I appreciate you making time for me, and you always do make time. We spent a lot of virtual time together, and it's.

We do, dude.

It's important to me.

Me, too.

And that is going to be taking care of each other. I always like this topic, and. You ever watch YouTube videos? I guess the more you watch of certain topics, if you're watching personal development, you get these interesting headlines on some of this and a particular author I think you and I both know and have talked about. Simon Sinek, I think his name is.

Yeah, yeah. The power of why.

Yeah. Video.

A really good book.

Yeah.

I think it's a TED talk. I believe that's really powerful. I've always, and I think I have also read the book, but this came across. There are always some really interesting headlines that kind of catch your eye and you're wondering, is it going to really be as good as the headline 50 minutes for the next 50 years of your life? And honestly, I haven't watched the whole thing, but the first few points, there's one in particular that caught my attention, and it was this, how important it is to take care of each other. So I thought I'd make a podcast out of it.

Yeah. I appreciate Simon Sinek's work. He does the power of why, and I don't know if this is the video that you're talking about, but I remember him talking about a video, and he. I think he drew some quadrants on a whiteboard or on a pad where he talked about the kind of person that you want as a leader in your organization. It's not always who you think it is.

Okay. That's.

It's not the exact same thing. But I think this story that he told, which I want to relate to you a little piece of this that I found really interesting. And he said he heard a Seal, a Navy Seal, talk about who becomes a seal because of that. Such incredible training that they have to go through. And the response was, I can tell you the kind of people who don't become seals, the guys that show up with huge, bulging muscles, covered in tattoos, who want to prove to the world how tough they are, none of them make it through the preening leaders who like to delegate all the responsibility and never do anything themselves. None of them make it through. The star college athlete who've never really been tested to the core of their being. None of them make it through. Some of the guys that make it through are skinny and scrawny. Some of the guys that make it through, you will see them shivering out of fear. However, all the guys that make it through, when they find themselves physically spent, just emotionally spent, and when they have nothing left to give physically or emotionally, somehow they are able to find the energy to dig down deep inside themselves, to find the energy to help the guy next to them. Those are the guys who become seals. You want to be an elite warrior. It's not how tough you are. It's not about how strong you are or how smart you are. It's not about how fast you are. If you want to be an elite warrior, you better get really, really good at helping the person to the left and helping the person to the right of you, because that's how people advance in this world.

Oh, I love that.

Isn't that powerful?

That's who's going to keep you alive, man. And ultimately, that's what the seals are about, right? Special missions.

Yeah.

Keeping each other alive for the sake of the mission. Keeping each other alive for the sake of tomorrow's mission, right. For the brotherhood. I knew a Navy seal one time, my daughter took karate, and he was not an instructor, but he was just there hanging out. I think one of his, one of his kids were there and the most unassuming, humble, quiet guy in the room. And come to find out that when he tells his story, he took out some serious enemies.

Wow.

And he talked a lot about working as a team. He talked a lot about keeping each other awake at night and making sure that the weakest of us and we all become. And that's one thing he said there comes a time that we're all the weak link. And moving that in, how important it is that move to move that weak link forward with the rest of the group.

Wow.

Yeah. Yeah.

I just really like that. It reminded me of the band of brothers, one of my favorite. It is the favorite miniseries. Think of many people.

I've not seen it.

Really?

I can't believe it. It's an HBO thing, right?

Yeah. It's uncovered lots of other channels. Oh, my God, Joe, it's so fantastic. We've seen Private Ryan. What is it?

Saving Private Ryan?

Yeah.

Ever seen saving Private Ryan?

Yeah.

Awesome movie.

Well, if you like that, think of ten episodes of an hour each telling the story of the 101st airborne, the easy Company and their brotherhood and the training that they went through jumping into France on D Day in Normandy and all of their battles that the battle of the bulge, all the way to the eagle's nest, capturing the eagle's nest, Hitler's eagle's nest, and the characters and the people. And there's little they put in talking with the actual men who are a part of this. It's always like the preview of that episode. And man, it's powerful. It's very moving and I think you'd enjoy it. So definitely if you. Yeah, if you've never seen that, definitely. But it, and I didn't interview Sergeant Winters, but I did ask chat GPT if I were to ask him that.

Question, I was going to ask you, did you actually talk to this guy at some point? Did you have a chance meeting with him? And.

Yeah, still in the style of sergeant Winters. What would he say was their success? Because they were band of brothers and even to this day, of course, unfortunately, our greatest generation, we're losing many of them, but they still get together for reunions every year. And if someone were to call and had a problem, they would be right there throughout their whole lives.

Yeah, that's almost like the ultimate 03:00 a.m.. Friend, right?

You got it, dude. You got it. And I was thinking, and he was talking about the seals, the people who you think would be the ones who make it through. Isn't that interesting? It's not always the case. Those aren't the ones. They're the ones that you don't know.

What'S deep in somebody, man. You don't know what somebody's made of until the pressure's on.

Yeah.

And they're, they have to do stuff that they never thought they could do under any circumstances. I see some of these training videos and I see some of these movies that depict seal training and what the seals have had to go through. I'm pretty convinced I wouldn't last five minutes. I know, but you know what, Kurt? You never know.

You never know.

You never know what's inside, right?

Yeah, very true. Had those thoughts myself. Then on the other side of that, of course, that we talked about the folks that survived some of the most horrific conditions in the concentration camps and the ones who made it through. We talked about this a little bit in recent weeks. The ones that were helping others, they had a purpose. They were the kind of leaders that felt if they could take care of the others, maybe they could get through, too. And I think it's an interesting, profound thing that even though you may be selfishly taking care of others, you're getting a tremendous amount of benefit. And I think it's a key to success, too. So that's what I want to explore a little bit with you.

Awesome. I read a book several years back called the Five Dysfunctions of a team by Patrick Leni, Leo Cenci, something like that. I can't remember his last name, but the five dysfunctions of a team, and that was really good. And I would bet if you superimpose the ideas behind the SEAL team and what they hold important, and you match them up against these five dysfunctions of a team, I bet you they would lay over very, very well. This is a business coach, a business speaker, two great author. But, yeah, I can't wait to dig into this with you, man.

So I'm going to give you four points. First one is teamwork, and I like asking Joe questions because he's got great responses. I'm wondering, have you ever been on a really well performing team?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think back to a sales team that I was on. I was actually the sales manager in northern Kentucky and in the insurance world, and I was the manager of a small insurance office that sold insurance to the more elder care insurance. I guess you would call it the best 65 and over insurance. But we had some very important goals. And once we realized that if this office, if my office succeeded as a whole, not now salespeople can be individual performers, right? They're out for to make their commission and their buck and build their book of business. But when we saw that we could all get a very significant bonus if the whole team, everybody on the team performed in, exceeded expectations, I guess you would say the important idea was that we all exceeded expectations. Not the office as a whole, but each individual. It's exceeded expectations. I saw the most selfish, self centered salespeople ride with underperformers and work with underperformers and teach them how to sell and work together, almost like they're in this big tug of war against this goal together. And when one person would tuck her out, the other person would come and anchor that anchor, the tug of war. The rope, I guess you would call it. And four weeks, for about four weeks, I watched this group of salespeople go out and give presentations to other people's leads and then turn around and give them the commission for it and give them the sale.

Wow.

And like I said, ride together and work together. And that experience and I don't know whose genius idea it was to put this campaign together, but that experience catapulted us to one of the top offices in the country, not just for that campaign, but for the entire year and the next year, because we learned something about each other. We learned to trust each other and we learned to work together. And what was also I noticed is we learned what each other's strengths and weaknesses were, and we were able to supplement that. And six months later, I saw in meetings where people were talking about, okay, I know you struggle with this, man. John, I know you're really good at this. What do you think? What do you think I should do in this situation? It was really an awesome experience, dude.

Great answer, as always. And, yeah, I love teamwork and collaboration. It's always been my thing. I think I've always been. I've gotten awards when I was a kid of being a good teammate. My experience. I'm going to go back. I talked a little bit about my sports in high school. It's coming up on March Madness for men's and women's basketball tournaments, which is really exciting. The brackets were picked. It always gets me thinking, my team, Connecticut, is picked again this year to win the national tournament. I think from my experience in sports and playing on a really good basketball team, I mentioned in high school, too, I can spot in any sport a lot of times who's probably going to be successful and maybe be champions. And it's not always the team with all the best players. Yeah. Isn't that interesting?

Yeah.

And if you've ever been on a really well performing team, you see these aspects. Now I talk about, we were kids that grew up and played every day. We were friends. You talk about selflessness and teamwork. Everybody knew their role.

That's a good one.

That's a good point.

Yeah.

Everybody knew their role. If you were the scorer, then, hey, you got a score. If you're the defensive guy or you're the rebounder, you got to be in this position. Everybody worked as a team and we built such confidence that nobody could beat us. You're having towards the end of the game, you're down two points with the clock running out or one point. I remember hitting a shot at the end of a game to win a tournament, and I had no doubt we were going to win that game. It was just such confidence in my teammates.

Awesome.

But I can watch lots of teams there. There are, there are certain body motions you can see or you hear stories from the locker room. As soon as you're here dissenting problems. You're like, it always gets me when they bring on a guy who creates problems in the organization.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, that is not going to create cohesiveness that you need to win if you want to win the championship. I'm not talking about being a good team that wins a lot of games. I'm talking about the team that is last standing at the end of the championship series. They go through a lot of hard things together, and that just bonds them together.

It is funny how sports teams will do that. They'll bring in this superstar that has just been a cancer in other organizations and think that he's going to do well there, and he may very well do well as an individual, but it's a poisonous, toxic environment.

I was the captain of this team, and I got extremely angry when my coach brought up a freshman to start over. One of our seniors. That was one of my seniors. I lost it. I lost it on the coach in a private meeting. I said, this is. I don't care. What the hell are you doing? This is not helping the team for lots of reasons, but especially because we were so close. We stood up for each other, and that's what you do.

So how did he respond to your bold approach?

I think he respected my opinion and he heard it from fans, and it was a pretty tight community that was close to the team, and he saw the rest of the team rejecting that idea altogether, so it turned around. It didn't last the whole season. Yeah, teamwork, that's really important. Selflessness. You're going to gain much more success by helping each other along. Like, Joe had a great one. The other one is, how about the power of asking for help? Why is it so hard to ask for help, especially when you're a leader?

Joe, I can tell you from my point of view why it's hard for me to ask for help.

Yeah.

And there's some ego involved here, Kurt, just to read my mail out loud a little bit, there's some ego involved here. I don't want to be seen as weak and unknowing and ignorant. I don't want to be seen as weak. So if I'm asking for help, that means that somebody has something over on me and they're stronger than me in some way. That means if they're stronger than me, I am weak somehow. And if I show my team, if I'm the leader of a team and I show that my team, that I'm weak, then I will be a less effective leader, which is despite me still having this, sometimes it's rare now it's just the opposite, man.

Yeah.

That's why that it's for me, that's always been why it's been hard for me to ask for help, especially from my team. But I did learn a long time ago how important it is to show some vulnerability and to show it's okay to, to express some weakness or you need some help because that's ultimately what you want your team to do with you. Right?

Right.

You want your team to come to you when they need help. And if they think it's not okay to show weakness, then they're never going to do that. So all of a sudden, you have these crazy, stoic people just trying to bang their head up against the wall because it feels so good when it's, when they stop.

I agree 100%. You gotta be a little humble to do this.

Right.

But it's so important we know that we've talked about it's not how to do something, it's who can do it.

Yep.

Who can do this. Right? So much stronger of a team. I, in our society, too, you see this of leaders and I think we learned trying to think, was it Dale Carnegie who's, who talked about, he has a famous quote around this. I don't need to know how to do anything. I just need to surround myself with people that know how to do it.

Absolutely.

I love that. And it's not something that's.

And early in my career when I've had leadership jobs or leadership roles or management roles, again, this is me. Read my mail out loud a little bit. I was always intimidated to hire somebody that I thought was smarter than me, more talented than me, and more productive. There's somebody that could be more productive than me because I didn't want to be outshined, man. I got to this position because I was typically among the most talented and most productive and, and I didn't want to hire somebody that would outshine me. Now, this was very early, Kurt, but it's still right there present in my memory when I learned that my job as a leader, as a manager, is to hire people better than me and hire the next guy that's better than that guy and learn to manage and lead. The egos and the dynamics and the little idiosyncrasies that each one has.

Yeah.

But everybody on my team right now is better than me. And I say that not because of the sake of this conversation. I'm telling you, they're better than me. I got a salesperson in Europe. Dude, that will run me ragged. And when he's making a sales presentation, I'm thinking, man, this guy is just nice, man. When he squeezes, juice comes out every single time.

Another Joe ism.

Yeah.

So I think it's important to ask help, even though it can be tough. I think it shows that you are a leader, actually accepting help and creating supportive environment. So not only ask, sometimes it's hard to even accept help. You didn't really even ask for it. But can you think of a time where you accepted help and it contributed immensely to your overall well being or success, even though you didn't kind of want to?

Well, I'm not sure that I didn't want to, but I wasn't ready for it until it was presented to me.

Yeah.

The job that I'm in right now, which is, of course, part take two of a job that I had before, I'm actually reporting to and work for a person that I mentored in the business. And her and I worked closely on some projects, and we worked together, and I mentored in this business. When I left, she became a leader within the organization, and when she reached out to me to come back, I had to take a step back and say, man, I really like this person, but she's going to be my boss. I'm going to have to accept leadership from her and. And I'm going to have to look to her for help and guidance, for sure. And, wow, am I glad I made that decision.

Yeah.

Because she is a great leader. She's an engaged human being. She understands that we're not only having a professional relationship, but we're having a human experience.

Wow.

Us together as a team. And you know what? A lot of that. Some of that comes from me. I can see some of that, and it's refreshing. But also, I'll be honest with you, it was a little intimidating. So is this really the nature of your question, where I accepted help and it contributed immensely to my overall well being and successful? The second part is. Right, and I would say the first part, in a way, I did accept help.

Yeah.

And I did accept that. That she was going to be my leader and what a fantastic leader she's turned out to be.

Great example. I remember us talking about this a little bit, too.

Yeah.

You have these thoughts go through your mind, but if you make the right decision like you did, you see, it's rewarding. I think in my technical position, I work with just a great team of really smart people. I think on the technical side, you can see people maybe creating something and not want to share that technical expertise because they think if they're the only one that knows it, they're going to keep their job because they're important. They're like the single point of failure that happens. But I work on a team and I can remember a situation. We help each other, I help them. We're going to talk about that as the last point. But I had a really difficult program I was working on and we were just having a conversation that we have an hour every week where we just talk about different things that we're doing. Some of that relates to each other. And one of the guys made a comment to me that first. At first I was like, oh, gosh, I don't want to throw away everything I've done for the last two or three weeks to go in a whole nother direction. And he gave me some good points on why I should. And as he talked to me, I was like, I think he's right. I think I need to throw away everything and start over. And it was the best decision I made. And I had to say I went the wrong direction. I had to eat that humble pie and I had to thank him immensely. I said, dude, you were right. This was the right way to go. And it worked out and it was a big project with a lot of eyes on it. So he really saved me.

When I think of a time that I accepted help from somebody that I didn't really want to accept help from, but it did contribute to my overall well being and success now. And I'm looking forward to dramatic future success because of this. Have a mutual acquaintance, a leader, somebody that we look up to, somebody that we follow. His name is Cliff Ravenscraft. And Cliff sent me an email several weeks back offering me free coaching. No cost, no strings attached, no expectations. I was hesitant to accept this offer. Now, Cliff and I know each other at a surface level, and I know that you engaged him on a couple coaching projects and some things that you did. I'll be honest with you, if Cliff, if you happen to listen to this, I don't mean anything, any offense by it, but I had. I struggled with Cliff a little bit. I struggled with Cliff because he's extremely confident and I misinterpreted that confidence for arrogance. He's extremely focused. He has a good grasp of who he is and what he can do and what he has done, and he's fairly vocal about it, about his successes. And I misinterpreted some of that as arrogance and self centeredness. And I was wrong. I was wrong.

He.

He gave me 90 minutes. No, actually, he gave me 290 minutes. Sessions of some of the best coaching and best business advice and best personal development advice that I've ever had. And this is. I was hesitant to ask to accept his offer and for all intents and purposes ask for his help, but it contributed immensely to my overall well being and success. And I really think that was a pivotal point in my life right now.

I love it. Fantastic answers, Joe. I love these. The last point I'm going to make is reciprocity. Cliff actually taught me reciprocity. Now that I think of that, Joe, the mentoring you're speaking with is the reason you and I know each other. I came to Cincinnati. Cliff did how to build a Internet business kind of seminar in his home for two and a half days. Came in on a Friday night. So Saturday, all day Saturday and into Sunday, we had half a day. But I asked a question. I was thinking mostly of my podcasts. There's so many podcasts about Disney World or whatever topic you're talking about. If you're trying to be a thought leader in something, there's so many other people there. And his answer to me was, but none of them are you. Ooh, that's a profound answer. Not only that, and why would people give back to you, whether it's some of the services you're giving or. Yeah, if you have a paid program or some of the things that you're doing, you're selling or you're providing. And the term, I don't think I ever heard this term before reciprocity came up.

Yeah, I love that term and I love that concept.

You and I talked.

Yeah.

There's a book called Influence by Robert Cialdini. Cialdini is, I think, how you say his name. And he talks a lot about the power of reciprocity.

Yeah.

And how the power of reciprocity can last generations. He talks about, I can't remember the example exactly, but he talks about a country who came to the financial aid of another country, even though that country couldn't afford anything. But this other country was in trouble because generations prior, that country helped out the other country. And this is something that lasted. The power of reciprocity, in this case lasted hundreds of years. And you know, the power of reciprocity in your own life, you know, personally, when somebody does something for you without expectation or just what, maybe even take out that last part. When somebody does something for you, there is that sense of balance that we want to create, right? This person's done something for me. I want to do something for them. And I realize now that I think about this book, I want to go back and read this book again.

Yeah.

Influenced by Robert Cialdini.

I love it.

It's really good.

Have you ever helped others without expecting payback? Yet you get lots of payback from those people, from your efforts.

I have. I was for a period of time at my church for a number of years, actually. I was always called on when somebody needed to move or they needed something repaired or they needed something fixed in their house or moved around or some kind of physical laboratory. Now, I'll be honest with you, I'm not terribly talented at any of that stuff. I can hold my own generally, but I'm not terribly talented. But we had this group of guys that were on call at any moment, and when they would call on us, we would go help every single time. We'd help move, we'd help fix something, we'd help tear down something, whatever it might be. And we never. People always offered to pay. People always offered to whatever it might be. Usually pay was the most common, most. Most common thing offered. Hey, let me give you. I'll give you dollar 100 for this. But we never took any pay. And I personally think that in some way that would have cheapened the effort. We never did it expecting payback. We never did it expecting anything else. But you know what? When it tame, when it came time for me to need something.

Yeah.

For me to need something, whatever it might have been, it's. It was almost magical because people found out of. This is a kind of a personal need, but people found out and flocked to us, and it was amazing. And I. And to this day, I can't remember telling anybody about the need, but somehow people felt. People found out and flocked to us.

It sounds like it's a wonderful life, that Christmas time movie, George.

Yeah.

And that's always a good feeling, dude. It is a good feeling. And it may, you know, and I'm not trying to wave my banner here, but it is a good feeling to do stuff for people without expecting any payback.

Yes.

Without expecting anything in return. On the other hand, do I go there with you, Kurt? I don't know. The universe is going to bring it back around.

How else can you say it? You have this feeling that it's going to, I guess. No, you do it because you want to and you don't expect anything in back. It feels good to do things for others. I feel anyway, I'll just wrap it up with my experience with my podcast. As you give lots of advice, you bring people together, people enjoy the community that's built. And my gosh, they give back to me in such powerful ways, not just in gifts. Matter of fact, one of my listeners is sending me a shirt in the mail. I should be getting it tomorrow. I get gifts.

Awesome.

I don't know, Joe. I'm gonna have to move out of this office because there's so much stuff like that listeners have sent to me. My road recorder here is a gift that my community gave to me, and there's. I could go on and on, but just the friendships and the nice things that they say to me is just amazing. And Cliff was right. Reciprocity is a real thing. It certainly is. So I'll wrap it up right there. Joe, that is a topic that I learned from Simon Sinek, and there's several other points that he makes that are really good. He's really good at coming up things that really make you think, but I think taking care of others, not only great feeling when you're doing it, but it's going to be really beneficial for your success and make it all fun, too, when you're successful.

Good show, man. Good show. I like this subject a lot, especially the idea of working together as a team and understanding the dynamics of a team and understanding what makes the arguably the greatest teams in the world that nobody knows is there is. Are the seal teams, right? And understanding what makes them work. Have you ever seen those videos of either a Seal team or something like that? Of them, there's a. I don't know, a 20 foot wall in front of them or something like that, or higher. And the idea is every single person has to get over this wall. And it's so amazing to watch these guys climb this wall, and then the person on top has to make sure the person below them gets up over, but then they have to coordinate it in such a way that there's always the foundation. Right. The foundation's always there. So you got a guy that's crawling back down the. The human ladder to pull the other people up one at a time, and it's this weird kind of dynamic. And you're looking at. You're like, how are they doing that? And they go up and down and up and down and on the shoulders and on the feet and pushing and pulling, and before you know it, that last person is flopping over that wall. Like, my gosh, that's a work of art.

I don't know you're explaining that story. Another story I love and it is a movie. You can go watch the miracle on ICE. When the US 1980 hockey team beat the best in the world, which was the Russians. Was it Lake Placid? I believe I can remember watching that live as that team and to see how the coach, they hated that coach. They all had a common enemy. And you could see when the team was bonding. They were from rival colleges. They hated each other when they, several of them did not like each other and they were tough kids, but they learned to hate the coach altogether. And there was lots of moments when he could see that team bonding happening. And it's got to happen fast because they put the team together as a bunch of all stars and I don't. You can watch any all star game. Remember when the US men used to get beat because they were a bunch of all stars, but they couldn't, they had no teamwork in the Olympics until they started going to the pros and that kind of thing. But, yeah, that is an amazing to show.

It may be one of the greatest moments in US sports history.

Sports history. Yeah.

It's just amazing. When they beat the Russians and I think they went on to beat Finland for the gold. But that's not such a big story, right? Because the beating the Russian was David and Goliath. And the core, the core talent, the core thing to that team was endurance. And then if you watch that team, they pushed each other. The coach pushed, pushed them and they were accountable to each other. And they would get mad at each other, the coach would get mad at them, but they knew they were all there for a common goal. And their endurance was incredible.

Incredible, Kurt, I bet. I guarantee it, those guys still stay in touch with each other? Oh, absolutely. Good stuff.

You believe in miracles.

Yes Michaels. Now let's hear Joe, your win for the week.

Well, I have a, I have a very important exercise that I've been putting off and I don't know why I've been putting off, but it's critical, it's a critical exercise to my future coaching services and the coaching services that I'm going to offer. And it was such a simple, it's such a simple exercise and I'm in the midst of it now. But it's to send a couple very important emails out this week and you talked about it. You're one of the person, one of the people that received one of those emails where I had to send an email that was pretty vulnerable for me, asking other people to tell me what they thought of me and what my strengths were and what I had to offer and where my talents lie, things like questions like that. And, Kurt, you are very gracious to respond to that. And I sent out a couple of those emails this week, and I'm going to send out a couple more as I go through this process. But it's an exercise that's critical to make my coaching services successful, and I completed that this week, and I'll continue to do it throughout the coming weeks. It may sound like such a small thing, but it's important to me, recognizing a hurdle that I have to get over and strengthening that muscle.

That's a great win. And I understand the struggle because I've always said to you, I'm not really good at getting feedback, accepting feedback or criticism. You've always been better. I was actually a little surprised that this was difficult for you to do, but congratulations. That's a. We can talk later about my responses, maybe on our Saturday mornings, but I enjoyed doing it for you.

There was a vulnerability that I. That was involved with this that I wasn't out expecting when actually, Cliff gave me this assignment, and there was a vulnerability to it that I wasn't expecting that locked me up. It's different when you're working with strangers and you're bold with strangers, but when you show your soft underbelly to people who know you best. I don't know. There was a vulnerability there that locked me up.

Yeah.

So that was a big win for me.

It is a big win to get it out there. You feel good about it.

Right?

Well done. So, my win for the week is something I can remember repairing my garage door. The springs would break, and every time I close that door, I have this fear that spring is gonna break. And I can remember this noise, like, this thing, like a piece of it, like, flinging in the air. Think I'm gonna get. I'm gonna get killed by this garage door one of these days. They're so heavy. These are the heavy wood and the old ones and the garage door opener. These springs really make it easy for that garage door to open. Well, I closed the garage door last couple days, and the cable broke. It wasn't the spring. The cable just snapped. I went, oh, gosh, here it is, Monday, and I got to work on this. I got to do all. I got all these things to do already. Now I got to. I can't get my car in and out without really, it was so heavy to lift. You can undetap the garage door opener quite easy. But that door is so heavy. But I went over to Home Depot, I got the cable, and, you know, I've been bragging about the tools I got for Christmas. They came in handy.

Awesome.

All the tools. I was, like, so proud of myself. I'm, like, picking out the tools I need to get the bolts undone. And it really wasn't a difficult job. You know what the hardest part of this job was? And it just gave me flashbacks of doing these things with my dad.

Not cursing.

Yes, because I dropped one of the little nuts and that holds the cable together and I couldn't find it.

Like, oh, what a terrible feeling.

It was like the last part of this, like, I had it, like, all put together and I dropped this. I called my wife and I like, can you find. I dropped this little piece. I showed her what it was. Could not find. I said, forget it. I'm going over to Home Depot just to buy that little nut to put this thing back together. And would you believe I was putting. I had it all together. I'm getting ready to bring the car in. And outside the garage door around the corner, was that little nuts laying there. It went like 10ft away. Like, how did it go that far? Right, right. But that was the hardest part of the whole thing. When you drop the part you're trying to put everything together with and you can't find it so successful. I got my garage door working again. I'm going to replace the other cable, too, because you got to do both at the same time. It's working now. All right.

Yeah. I'm not sure I would tackle a garage door. Those springs are intimidating, man. I'll tell you, I was talking to the person who installed my garage door a couple years back, and he knows of stories where people have been seriously injured by those springs, if not killed. But he tells one story where a spring popped and it went through two layers of drywall completely through a wall.

Wow.

Through drywall, through the installation, and through the next drywall, and ended up in the person's living room.

Well, that could happen at my house, Joe, so thanks for that thought. I got even more fear every time I close the door and run to the run away. All right, what's your resource tipper hack for this week?

You know I love little gadgety kind of stuff, right?

I do.

Just, I love that kind of stuff.

You have gas?

Yeah.

Gear acquisition syndrome. But I'm surprised I've not talked about this because I use it almost every day. Several years back, I've replaced it twice now from Amazon. I bought. The first one I bought was at a garage sale somewhere or some thrift shop or whatever it might be, is every morning I make two fried eggs for breakfast, and I don't cook them in butter or anything. I spray some non stick pam or whatever that that olive oil stuff is. And that's what I eat. And I use this nonstick clam shell skillet. It's a small, little, cheap skillet I bought for $10. I think I bought it for ten or $15 on Amazon, and I use it every single day. And it makes perfect fried eggs. It makes perfect omelets. It makes perfect pancakes when I use it for pancakes. And what it is, the idea is you have two sides of a pan, right? And there's a hinge on the back, and you lift it up and you crack your egg inside one side, and you close the lid. And, you know, when you hear it sizzle or whatever the indicator is for the pancakes or the. For the omelets or whatever it is, you don't have to worry about flipping it over with a spatula. You just turn the whole thing over, and it cooks the other side. And I just love this little thing, Kurt. It's something that I use every single day. It's sitting on the counter of my kitchen right now. And during the flood, I couldn't find it. And it drove me crazy because we packed up things quickly for the flood, and it drove me crazy. But, man, I just love that. This little clamshell skillet that I use every day.

This is. You didn't get it on Amazon. You got it at a garage.

I got the first one on a garage sale, and then it broke. And then I've been through one or I've been through two or three, I think maybe just two. And then it broke. Used it for years. I've been using this thing for, I know, five, six, maybe ten years, something like this. And it finally. The first one finally broke, and I bought one on Amazon. And they're not expensive, they're $15 or something like that. But I love this thing, man. Want to the point where I'm, like, to the point where I'm, like, anxious when I don't have. When I couldn't find it, I was mad, I was anxious, I was irritated.

It does one egg at a time.

No, it does as many as you can put in. Into the little pan. Oh, I guess it's a skillet. Yeah, skillet with a handle that. That has a hinge. It hinges. And if you took it apart, you'd have two small skillets. All right.

Yeah.

And so it's two small skillets, kind of one on top of each other with a hinge on the back. You just lift it up. You crack your eggs inside of it, close the lid. When you hear it sizzle or whatever your indicator is, you flip it over, and it cooks the other side. No spatula, nothing.

Yeah, I like that. I. I was gonna ask. I got an Amazon to. Well, they. You put the eggs in a microwave, and I use it for making my eggs sandwiches every day.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, I do the same thing with the oil, little spray, couple of eggs in the microwave, and make my egg sandwiches. So easy.

Helpful little hint right now, never, ever cook hard boiled eggs in a microwave.

Okay. No, I'm not gonna do that. These are fried eggs. When they're done, I guess they're poached. It would be proper term, but they're good. They're just as good. Sometimes they explode a little bit. Buyer beware. My resource is what I've been talking about today. The Simon Sinek 50 minutes to your. The next 50 years of your life. It's a salacious title, but check it out. There's some really good tips there, and he's a good author to check out. What's your quote?

I love science. I love Simon Sinek stuff, man. He does one on leadership that I really invite you to check out, because he talks about the quadrants of leadership. And if you think about. If you think about performance and trust. Performance on one side of the. What do they call the side of a chart? A side of a chart.

X Y chart.

XY. Let's call it XY.

Yeah.

I can't remember what the. What the sides are called. The side and the bottom. They're called.

Axis.

Axis. There you go. Thank you. Thank you. One axis, the vertical axis is performance, and the horizontal axis is trust. And you have high performance and low trust and high trust. But low performance and high trust. Really check it out. The leadership matrix by Simon Sinek. I love his stuff. And I can't wait to listen to this one that you just recommended.

Yeah.

The one that really, I found to be really interesting and remember, trying to remember. I don't remember the title so much as to the point he was making is people don't buy, like, the sizzle, what you're selling and all the features. They want to know why you do what you do. And you get. Of course, the most important one is Apple.

They.

He talks about how Apple has gained such great customer loyalty because they're making products that are easy to use, and that's like their. That's like their company theme. And people buy. They're just making computers, like everybody knows.

Right.

In some sense, but they really bought into why they do what they do. What's your quote, Joe?

My quote comes straight from the Bible, and it's appropriate for this conversation as we talk about friends and teamwork and what we're willing to do for the people closest to us and what we're willing to do for our team. And this may sound a little dramatic, but I think the message is right there. And these letters are in red. These words are in red, so they came straight from the man.

Important words.

Yeah.

John 15 12 23. In the Christian Bible, this is my commandment that you love one another just as I have loved you. And this is it. Listen to this dude. Greater love has no one than this. That one lay down his life for his friends.

Where you inspired my band of brothers and my seals, of course. Of course. Interesting how the christian faith has some really interesting or awesome tenets to it. Yeah.

God is pretty smart.

Funny how that is. Well, it's appropriate now that Easter's coming up.

Yeah.

That you would pick. Wasn't this definitely at the last Supper where Jesus said this?

Yeah. I don't know what. Where he said this. Quite honestly, I should know, but I.

Don'T, because he was getting ready to do that. I think it was from the last Supper may have been.

Yeah.

That's, uh. That's pretty powerful, wouldn't you. Don't you have love like that for others, that you would lay down your life for them?

There are people in my life.

Yeah.

That I would. There are people in my life that I would take a bullet for.

Right.

And there's a greater purpose behind that, right, man? There's a. There are people that I would dive into the icy water for and run into the fire for.

Right.

There are. And I know that you have those people in your life as well, Kurt, and that is the ultimate love, isn't it? Greater love has no one than this. That one lay down his life for his friends.

Beautiful.

It's awesome, dude.

Yeah.

What about yours?

Powerful. Coming up really soon, you can have everything in life you want if you would just help other people get what they want. Isn't that paradoxical?

I love me some zig. Ziglar.

Dude, you're a sales dude.

Oh, I love that. I love that.

You must have heard that one before.

Oh, thousands of times. And it's one of my favorites. It is. I still can. It's so simple, man. You can have everything in life that you want if you just help people get what they want. Keep that mindset. What about that mindset? How can I help somebody get what they want today?

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah. I truly believe that to be unselfish, interesting enough, when you're people, you do build a lot of trust with others, and there's a lot of reciprocity.

Kurt, I can't tell you. Kurt, I can't tell you how excited I am as I begin this coaching business and these coaching services for just this very reason. I can't tell you how excited I am to help people get what they want, either in business or their sales. Their sales life. Right? Yeah, whatever it might be. I can't tell you how excited I am because of just this concept from Zig Ziglar. You can have everything in life you want if you just help other people get what they want.

As you have been talking about this and we've had in this conversation today, think of the ripple effect, too, when you lift someone else up, people that you may coach. And I've thought of this, of things that Cliff has done. Think of the people that he's coached and what they have gone on to do to help others. And that ripple effect as it moves farther away from that source of someone getting helped. How many others benefited from that one act of kindness or that coaching experience?

You know, it's funny talking about that, Kurt, because if you look at. If you look at Cliff Ravenscraft's ledger sheet, for lack of a better way of saying it, there are people that he has coached and he has advised and who have came through his life that are much more successful than Cliff. But it's amazing to see how many people point back to him as the catalyst, as the foundation for their success.

Something to aspire to.

A lot of people.

Yeah, it really is something to aspire to. Take us home, Joe, the way only you can.

Kurt, this was a good show, my friend.

Thank you.

It was a fun show, and it really puts relationships in perspective and how important relationships are and to surround yourself with. With people who will build you up and protect you and move you forward in your times of strengths, in times of weakness. So really good stuff, man.

Thanks.

Our website is dudes in progress.com. Dudes in progress.com. If you want to send us an email, you can do [email protected]. We'll answer any questions. We'll respond quickly. Just tell us what you need and how we can serve you, and we'll be happy to do that. Kurt. Remember my friend, my pal, my comrade. Right? Progress is better than perfection. When we build relationships, the right relationships, and we. And we let ourselves be a part of a team that's going to move us forward. We keep moving forward. So let's keep moving forward.

Take care of each other, right, Joe?

We have to, dude. Talk to you soon. Take care.