This episode features a thought-provoking discussion with Darrell Evans, an accomplished marketing professional, entrepreneur, and executive coach who shares his expertise and real-world experiences.
From having fun at work to staying focused on what matters in the digital age, this episode covers a wide range of mind shifts relevant to both emerging and established leaders.
Discover the secrets to:
- turning an ocean liner into a kayak
- learn from past mistakes
- take your leadership skills to the next level
Join us as we delve into the mindset of successful leaders and explore the strategies that can help you become an effective and inspiring leader in your own right.
Show Outline
- 1:39 – Who’s counting on you? What should be making headlines?
- 7:26 – What sparked Darrell’s entrepreneurial drive?
- 12:04 – How do you step into situations and help guide people to organize their chaos?
- 18:18 – Coaching as a profession.
- 23:07 – The importance of having fun in the workplace.
- 25:09 – Are we buying into data outside our control? Are we taking our eyes off what we control?
- 29:04 – Leadership is like turning an ocean liner into a kayak
- 33:33 – What do you know now as a leader that you wish you had known earlier in your career?
- 38:33 – One of our best team members in the 12 years we’ve been together sent me a note saying she would have never got this opportunity
Notes from the Show: Episode 33
InsideOut Initiative – a national movement to empower and equip school communities to implement purpose-based athletics by connecting student-athletes to transformational coaches in a culture of belonging for their social-emotional character development
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Connect with Darrell Evans
Darrell Evans is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and co-founder of Yokel Local Internet Marketing. He and his team have helped entrepreneurs and companies to generate over $300M in revenue online since 2011. He’s personally started and/or operated 6 businesses since the age of 20.
He’s also the host of The MindShift Podcast and is the founder of the MindShift Business Accelerator (MBA) and the MindShift Growth Mastermind (MGM).
Episode 33 – Full Transcript
Aaron Lee 0:00
One of the things I love most about this podcast is having conversations with people who just get your mind thinking. And you may be using different words to describe different situations, but you’re talking about the same thing. And that’s what it’s like for me talking to today’s guest, Darrell Evans, and I’m excited for you to listen in Darrell is a serial entrepreneur and investor, a marketer. he co founded local local internet marketing based in Nevada, and he and his team have been helping entrepreneurs and companies generate over 300 million in revenue online since 2011. He has personally started or operated six different businesses since he was in his 20s. And he’s also the host of the mind shift podcast, here’s what’s interesting, DeRose goal is to help your entrepreneurial spirit, grab at least one mind shift that could catapult you to your next level of success. And I can nearly guarantee that you’re going to find many more than just one, you’re going to find plenty of mind shifts to tap into in this conversation. So let’s dive in. Welcome to the new generation leader podcast, we’re giving you the tools you need to lead in the digital world ready to reach your true potential. This is the new generation leader podcast. Alright, New year, new season, new things are constantly coming at us. What are you seeing here at the beginning of 2023, as you work with business leaders and see the landscape, what’s surprising you and jumping out that you think should be making headlines right now
Darrell Evans 1:39
that I think should be making headlines? Hmm, interesting question. And I appreciate that. In my world, I see a lot of maybe over concern about the current state of the economy. And I think as entrepreneurs as leaders, I’m wondAarong if leaders are getting a little sucked in to what could possibly happen and letting that alter their decision making this year. So I’m starting to see a lot of pullback. I’m starting to seeing a lot of cautiousness. And I like to try to say that I don’t know if it’s a headline or not. But can we just remind ourselves, well, we just made it through y’all. Look, we made it through what we went through just a few years ago. Do you really think sure inflation went through the roof that certainly caught her by surprise. I mean, I love Doritos, and Doritos are 299 out there for 79. That’s a little high. It’s not 8%. Everybody can do math and figure that out. But are we putting too much emphasis on the things that we’re really trying to do as leaders and as business owners and as entrepreneurs. So I think that’s something that we just been through something we all made it. One of my favorite quotes is what you’ve been through you got through so give yourself some credit. And I think in that is an opportunity for us this year to just stay focused on our goals and control the controllables, which is one of my core principles and core thesis about how we do things as leaders,
Aaron Lee 2:58
yes, controlling the controllables. I have a conversation so often. And it’s a great reminder to help us bring our world in. Because a digital world with headlines, global news, we can wake up every morning and know what’s happened across the globe in the last 24 hours. But we can’t control that. There’s so little that we can actually control. I love the perspective of focusing on what we’ve been through these last few years. We made it. So let’s bring some of that thinking forward. So when you see leaders getting stuck and zeroing in on controlling the controllables, how do you help them begin to lift their eyes up and look ahead at the possibilities of what could be?
Darrell Evans 3:42
Yeah, I think it comes back to looking at who you’re leading. It’s hard for me as a leader to shrink my belief system to shrink my level of confidence about the goals that we set the journey we’re on the road we’re traveling, if people are counting on me, right? I always say that, whether there’s real fear or false fear, right? I mean, you can argue fear, false evidence appearing real, whatever you want to call it, whether there are real threats, and there are or whether we’re actually over amplifying these threats, which we do. The bottom line is, is I always say who’s counting on you, who’s counting on us. And what’s interesting, Aaron, and you know, this, those who take the lead, right doesn’t matter how the role lays out what the title is. But if you stepped to the front of the class, if you stepped to the front of the boat, if you stepped to the front of the line, you’re taking a huge risk in the first place. Right? So it takes some muscle and some muscle memory to realize that you’re still human, you still do have those really motions, what we’ve learned as leaders and what we hope to learn and build a muscle for is to process those emotions quickly and get back to doing the thing we do which is be confident about the reason why we’re here be confident about the direction that we’re going be confident about our ability to navigate right when those things really do happen. And so I always say let’s look back at who’s counting on us. Is that our family is that our spouse is that our Kids that our loved ones? And then what about our business family, right? Who’s counting on us in the role in the department? Who’s counting on us and honor that, right? And I think then we can make decisions, we can make better decisions, and we can get away from those third party influences.
Aaron Lee 5:15
Take a look at you in the mirror for a minute. Who are you leading what’s driving and motivating you from a personal side?
Darrell Evans 5:23
Today, I’m 52 years old going to be 53. This year, if you’d asked me that question, 10 years ago, it was different. If you asked me the decade before it was different today, I’m motivated by this unbelievable opportunity to leave a footprint with audio. And with video that my children’s children’s my great great greats could actually hear my voice and could listen to how I live my life and could take some pieces away from it, as opposed to just hearing, oh, your great, great, great, great, great, or your ancestors did this or that we have a really unique opportunity. So for me, when I started my podcast, for example, I started it as a platform that would hopefully live on long past me. And I’m just focused on leaving a little bit of a footprint for my family number one, and those to come. We have a blended family, we have five kids, we have four grandkids today, I’m sure that’s going to be by the way, never, you could have never told me years ago what being a grandfather was going to be like, it’s one of the most pleasures of my life to this day, but to be able to leave a little bit of a footprint where they could listen and hear and not just hear how I think. But here’s how the people I communicated with and how I interacted with and people that were in my world. And so that’s what motivates me from a personal side. And then from a business side, I’ve always enjoyed the serial entrepreneurship aspect of job creation, right? People think, well, you just entrepreneurship, they just chase money and cars and houses. No, no, no financial independence, that is part of it. But I’ve always been motivated by creating jobs. And one of the core philosophies I have in my agency, and in my work has always been hire people whose gifts align with our corporate vision. Because if you do that you hire the right people who have a desire to execute their gift in alignment with our vision with where we’re going, then you never actually have to get them to work that work for themselves. I mean, you I’m saying. So it’s easier said than done, of course. But that’s also one of my big motivator, which is how do I create more jobs? You know, it sounds but I’m always thinking, how do we grow this business so more people can execute their gift in alignment with our vision?
Aaron Lee 7:26
What sparked that entrepreneurial drive for you?
Darrell Evans 7:30
I got my entrepreneurial bug Aaron at the age of 20. But what drives it? I think what drove me to actually believe that I could be successful as an entrepreneur was a scenario that happened in my early 20s. When I was in college still, and I was in the restaurant business at that time, I was going through school, and I was a general manager for a restaurant here in the United States. Everybody knows college kids favorite called Taco Bell. And I was a young general manager, I was really afforded an early opportunity at leadership. So I started as a fry cook when I was 16. And I just did my job the way I was supposed to, I guess I overdid my job. They saw some something in me, like, Oh, before, you know what I was an assistant manager. Before you knew it. I was 20 years old and a general manager. In our area, I was the youngest General Manager in the 23 stores or whatever the number of stores 2122 stores. Now, what happened, there was a situation that happened, I was taught to do 100%, I was taught to show up and perform, do your best. And what I just did was I did that regularly. I didn’t take days off, I think I was there at that company for 11 years total. I don’t know if I missed two handfuls of days that just don’t other than my ordinary days off. So I’m just wired that way. Well, something happened. And without getting into the details, it became pretty clear to me that my hard work wasn’t being rewarded. But the benefit was going to those who employed me, which is fine, I understand the organizational structure. But I realized that Oh, I can do 110% If I will, because no one really can do 110. That’s just what we say. But I can go all out. But I’m still only going to get a max of 5% Max. And by the way, they justify why they can’t give the five 5%. So it was like okay, maybe I should really believe in my entrepreneurial spirit. Because it was there. I had two businesses in college one was okay, more of a side hustle is what we would call it today. The other was a little bit more of a business. That one didn’t go too well with me and a business partner, a good friend of mine, we’re still friends to this day. That was just our alienness that had nothing to do with the business model is just us not knowing what the hell we’re doing. I got out of college and I said okay, it’s probably better that I bet on me, it’s probably better that I bet on me. Number one, I’m a good student number two, I can follow instructions. Number three, understand process number four, I learned how to manage people. Number five, I was 20 years old managing people in their 30s and 40s. Number six, I did pretty good at that. Number seven, I actually now understand how business runs because you when you run a franchise and you you don’t run a franchise, but when you’re running a restaurant was a million dollar restaurant at the time. I’m in my 20s and I’ve got top line p&l I gotta report seven major numbers relative to p&l food costs labor costs I’ve managed and monitored. I’m like, oh, okay, this is like a game. I played sports. So to me entrepreneurships like a sport and like I was a football, baseball, but I coach sports, I’m like, this is it’s just a game. It’s a system. And so that’s what drove me into it. And I just have never been able to look back. Now, there was a small setback. And I did take took a job during the real estate collapse, right, so I owned a mortgage company, and back then I felt forced to do it. Looking back, it wasn’t the only option. But I did feel it as the safe option. Because I have kids and we had mortgage industry, everybody knows what happened. 2008 2009 Well, we had to shut our mortgage company down. And there’s a company that I’ll say, was courting me pretty heavily to come in and run their thing. And I let that conversation get to the point where they wooed me enough to get me to say yes, and I let go of a little bit of that entrepreneurial spirit for a hot minute. And I went in there. And within 60 days, I was like, I got to get the hell out of here, pardon my French. I was like, this was a mistake. And so I did, I turned right back around. And when I started another company, I was like, this is not going to work. Once again, what I saw in my early 20s, showed itself up. And by the way, this is a big name company. Everybody here with no bank names has two words, and one starts with a W. So once again, I was like, Yeah, this is just not my jam. So that’s what drives me. I love creating. I love organizing, in a way in an odd way. I actually love chaos. And I know, I don’t like to say that often. Because I don’t want chaos. But I have a way of thriving in the middle of chaos. And being that person who can grab center and bring stability to situations. And I think that’s just been a gift that God’s given me, I don’t take credit for it. I just seem to be able to sit in the middle of crazy storms, and both the logical as well as the experiential and start to carve out solutions. And I just don’t run away from it. Now I used to wonder why is it always happening. And I’m like, you know, God gave you some gifts to figure this out. So just use it.
Aaron Lee 12:04
Absolutely, we do all have gifts. And we talk about that with a variety of guests on this show. Because I think unlocking and realizing the unique distinctions that each of us have, some of us don’t thrive in chaos, we can’t get our thoughts around under that pressure. And we need a different kinds of environments some of us do. And so recognizing those distinctions and allowing us to each uniquely be ourselves, gives us all the best chance to work together. And like you said, go out and find the best people who will align with the vision, the mission, what we’re trying to get after, let’s let everybody find best version of themselves and make this thing the best that it can be for the sake of all of us not just as you described in both of those seasons, where you were working for somebody else, that everything that you were doing, and all of your colleagues and those you lead was for whoever was higher up the chain. And so there’s a collective good that comes when we focus on that together, thinking for a minute about finding a way in the storm and in the chaos. That’s a unique perspective that like we said everybody has. So how do you step into situations and help guide people to start organizing their chaos, whatever their chaos is?
Darrell Evans 13:27
Great question. So I have a process I called the mind shift method. And it’s a four step process. The first two steps are the hardest. And that’s literally how I process and by the way, whether it’s a storm or it’s a chaos can be sometimes a rougher word than what it is. But I like the word uncertainty. Some people really thrive in certainty, but they don’t thrive. Well when things are uncertain. If you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re a leader, things are uncertain all the time. Like you know what I mean? Things can happen all the time. I mean, again, two and a half years ago, three years ago, we were all faced with an uncertain situation and we to find our way through that. So the first step to the process is to make peace with the facts. It’s very logical, hard emotionally, right? Make peace with the facts. I like to take myself out of the situation that we might be in or the situation that we’re facing or the coach is facing or the owner facing or try to get them out of that situation and say let’s just objectively look at the facts right? If we can objectively look at the facts we can then make peace with those facts the problem with the facts are we can’t change them sometimes and they suck a lot. Sometimes it just happened supply chain problems. The issue with the health situation a few years ago inflation These are facts, but the facts are the facts just like the storm is the storm one of the best quotes I’ve ever let massaged over me and stuck with me for years and that is when you’re in the midst of the storm don’t wish the storm would go away. Calm your mind until the storm passes because they all do right. And I learned this through my own hardships like I’ve had to go through my fair share as your listeners have Personal life, family life, health things, career losses, setbacks of all kinds in my world, I call them breakdowns. And then when those breakdowns happen, we can make peace with the facts we can get moving forward towards the breakthrough. Sometimes it’s hard when you make peace with the facts. I’ve got a friend today, who just let me know recently that she has cancer. And she’s one of the strongest people I’ve ever met in my life. And yet, I’m now watching this super strong person wobble. And I get it. I don’t have that diagnosis. But now my question is, and she knows she’s doing this, but she’s got to make peace with the facts. And she’s doing so in a very courageous way. Step two, though, is now make a new decision of what we’re going to do now, based on the facts. See, the facts are the facts. And if we’re okay with that, we don’t like them necessarily. We’re not happy about them. But now make a decision. What’s this new decision we’re going to do going forward? Because as leaders, that’s all we can control, like, right? If we’re going to be a leader, we agreed before that we can control the controller, which now means Okay, step two, what’s our plan? Now? What are we going to decide to do now? Are we going to let these facts stop us? Are we let them stall us? Are we going to let them keep us in fear? Or are we going to now become something that maybe we aren’t, and we never have become based on these facts? And so step two is really that. So those are the two things that we really focus on step three is more of a logical what is the plan of action from here, right. And this is where you need a coach. This is where someone like you, Aaron, you get called in, I get called in. And we may have been through something like that before, right? Because coaches generally, we can help people talk through these things before. So that strategic plan that make a plan, and then of course, again, seeking guidance, and counseling, and getting a coach is really going to be helpful in those areas. And of course, step four, and you know, this is the hardest part, make it happen. Now that we have made peace with the facts now that we have a new decision, or like to say a committed decision, I grew up learning under Tony Robbins, which many of your listeners probably have heard of. And in my early 20s, I didn’t have a lot of leadership training and coaching back then. And it came through Tony Robbins audio tapes. I know that sounds crazy today in this world with technology, but audio tapes, I used to use my car like a university while I was going to university, but he says make a committed decision. And a committed decision means we’re not going back. I think they say in some ways. In there’s some war stories or phrases where like, we’re going to the island and we’re gonna burn the boats. Right? To me, that’s a committed decision. And so I think that’s the distinction is a lot of times we make these wavery decisions where we’re optionally going to go this way, or we possibly could go back and get to know. So once we make that decision, step two, let’s get a plan in place. And that plan may need to come from someone who’s been through what you’ve been through. It could be my friends case, could be medical doctors plan, whatever that life’s plan looks like. But then now we’ve got to do the discipline of doing the thing we said we’re going to do long after the feeling we set it in past, right, doing the thing we said we were going to do long after the feeling that we set it in past. Right. And that’s the discipline of leadership, right? That’s a discipline of leadership. And that goes back to something you said earlier, which is will we do what we said we were going to do for the reasons we said we were going to do them consistently and repetitively. Right? So that’s really the challenge, I think. And that’s what we do as leaders and we have to be reminded of it every single step of the way.
Aaron Lee 18:18
I think as a coach and you’ve talked about coaching as a profession, but also coaching as a profession in the way that we do, but also coaching in the way that we think of sports coaches. And like you have mentioned your family, there are so many lessons that I pull away from my kids. But some of the best lessons have been on the field on the court. And I counted up I’m coaching an indoor soccer team right now. This is my fifth season ever of soccer. Soccer was not my number one sport, but guiding kids is so enjoyable. Oh my gosh. But starting the season, I started counting, I went back and I started coaching middle school youth sports when I was in high school. And so this is probably my 23rd 24th team across baseball, basketball, softball, soccer, dad of girls have shifted from baseball to Softball now. And there’s something about that coach mindset that for leaders to recognize and understand, hey, when you step on a basketball court, this isn’t like the old days of the player coach combo, you have a coach, and you have a player and the coach is never going to set foot on the court or on the field. But all you can do is invest and pour into that. And one of my clients, they actually call all of their supervisors, coaches, they aren’t leaders, they aren’t managers, they’re coaches. And so thinking about how you live that out and coming back around to what you just said, the power of a coach, a guide someone to come along with you that when you commit and say you’re gonna do this thing that we’ve got to Have somebody alongside of us to help guide us. Maybe they tell us like you said, maybe they’re giving us their professional opinion. Maybe they’re just creating the time and space on our calendar so that we follow up on that. And we remember long after the feeling’s gone, like you said, We’re gonna stick with this. And there’s so much that if we stick with and persevere, that so many great ideas out there, there’s so much ingenuity on the table. If we listen and tap in and commit to follow through, I
Darrell Evans 20:34
couldn’t agree more. First of all, I didn’t know that we share that common. First of all, you’ve got about a decade more in coaching experience with youth than I do. People ask me all the time. Like, if you go to a window of your time in your life, what was the most joyous thing you’ve ever done? It was coaching, basketball, and football. So I played basketball, football, baseball, ironically, I never coached baseball, but coaching football and basketball between 2002 2011 Nothing fired me up more than to go out. And like you said, pour into these obviously, I coached boys and football and basketball as well. But nothing was more enjoyable. I tell people all the time, like how you calendar, your life is how you show up in your life, right? So people say, Well, I’ve got these 1000 things to do. And I’m all over the place. And no, no, let’s look at your calendar and what’s on your calendar matters. And if your calendar is empty, then you don’t have enough clarity on what matters. So it was interesting that I ran my business back then when I was coaching during that window, and I had to drive 40 minutes to get to the practice field. And I didn’t have a kid on the field. So my two boys grew up with their mom in Texas, I live in Vegas. So there was a relationship breakup in the 90s in the late 90s. So I didn’t get to coach my kids, I got to coach them one or two times through the summer. But I didn’t get to coach my two boys, my two oldest kids who play ball and people said, Well, why are you so passionate about coaching other people’s kids, they’re not even your kids, you just don’t understand. This is not about whether they’re my kids or not, I’d love to coach my kids. But that’s not a part of my facts. Right? That’s when the mind shift method for me hit was when I had to address those facts that when when that relationship broke, and she decided to move to Texas, I had new facts, how am I going to be a good dad to two boys 1300 miles away from me, those were my facts, right? I had to figure those facts out. But I couldn’t say well, because my kids aren’t on the field. I can’t coach I showed up to pour into. And so it was really interesting to your point, that joy that came from possibilities of watching These Kids developed in a skill. By the way, most people don’t realize how much of personal development goes into sports, right? You know, this 20 years doing it, right? So it was just a joyous thing. And I think to your point of coaching, not just there for accountability, it’s there for that guidance. It’s there for, like you said, whether you’re teaching or leading, or you’re literally asking the question for them to solve it for themselves, right? That’s one of the more powerful things is sometimes not just sharing your experience, but sharing does that really make sense? In your thought, like, let’s talk through the thought process. And sometimes coaching for me is more joyous, just letting people think through. But being able to pose the question, right, that’s the one of the powerful aspects of it, the sports man, if I stopped everything today, I’d probably one thing I would do is just go back and coach sports, they probably don’t want to gray guy on the field at seven years old anymore. But
Aaron Lee 23:06
hey, I tell you one of my favorite insights and lessons over the last couple of years, a friend of mine introduced a book to me. And it was one of those books that I read the book, enjoy the book, went to the next book and followed that trail and got introduced to Joe airmen who was a well known, I think, Pro Bowl, defensive lineman for the Baltimore Colts before they moved to Indianapolis. And Joe had some of those facts in his own life that shifted his perspective. But every season of coaching softball, I got introduced to the idea that our number one goal out here is to have fun. I started when my oldest was I think she was four or five that first season. And so that was a shift that was about halfway through the seasons I had coached. And I realized, Hey, this is about having fun at that age learning some skills. Yes. Learning how to be on a team. Yes, but first and foremost, have fun. But Joe airman’s philosophy and he’s created the Inside Out initiative that’s partnered with the NFL and local sports organizations across the country. He was coaching a high school football team. And he said, we have two goals as coaches, one to make sure that you know, as players that we as coaches want the best for you as number one, and number two, we want to instill in you that you have the best interest of each other at heart. And it took that, hey, have fun to one step deeper, that still not about wins or losses. It’s not about personal accomplishment. But what are we transferring across the relationship, the investment and I think the same goes for leaders at work, what can I transfer, how can I make sure that you know I want the best for you? And that kind of environment gets people from surviving to thriving
Darrell Evans 25:00
I agree. You know, it’s interesting. I just, I think no leader in an organization wants to talk about the negative things that could be impacting the organization. I think it’s one of the difficult talks, right? It depends on what type of economic environment you just triggered something in my mind that just happened. So going back to this, quote, unquote, are we going to have a recession this year? Are we not whatever the case may be? And are we making decisions based on the idea that we’re gonna have recession because of what they said? Are we really just buying into data, right data that is outside of our control, and we’re taking our eye off and what we control? I had a talk of our team members, and it was one of those talks where it was like, I think there was a little too much kumbaya going on with my group and my leadership group, and they’re like, little too much Kumbaya, I’m like, listen, we are not going to buy into this conversation about recession. But let’s not get too kumbaya about where we are in our competitive landscape. Because if we take things too lightly, we’re gonna find ourselves facing some challenges. And to your point, just that you made is I’m telling you this, because the last thing I want to have happen is for us to get complacent. And then all of a sudden, we’re having one of those conversations that I’ve been seeing on LinkedIn. 12,000 laid off here. 15,000 laid off there you see the news, just like I see it. Let’s make sure that news don’t apply to us. So up to the point is I care about you. I’m not trying to have us have that conversation. So let’s be careful with our laxa days. Anyway, they’re not laksa days, but let me but there was just some energy that was starting to pervade. And I was like, Hey, let’s tighten things down a little bit. Let’s be careful, we’re in a very competitive industry. And competition is coming from a mile a minute, not just people coming into our world, new agencies come into our world, but the platform’s themselves are now starting to offer our customers help. So let’s not let’s be careful. So it’s like that same thing, like having that conversation. That is maybe that harder conversation, it’s more than in your face conversation. But the reason we’re having it is because I don’t want us to have I don’t want us to cross that bridge. And we’re having a conversation. I care about your well being I care about your economic status, I care about your future. So let’s stay focused. So it’s sometimes those conversations have to be have have to be had.
Aaron Lee 26:59
Absolutely. And it’s hard, because I think we are trained to feel as though we only have two options. One is to be nice. One is to tell the truth. And it’s you know, there are a number of folks who give a number of different frameworks. Radical candor is probably the most well known out there. But it’s the two by two matrix. It’s not either, or, it’s how do you find a hybrid of both, and have candor before the other people want to empower them? Give them opportunity? Bring the best out of them? Sometimes that means telling the truth, but it doesn’t mean you can’t be nice.
Darrell Evans 27:33
Yeah, no, you’re so right. I love the way you just said that. Like, it’s not either. Or, it seems as though it really comes down to someone what your own personal beliefs are like, first of all, I’ve always treated people the way I want to be treated like that’s what we call the golden rule, right? I know that we may have to have conversations, but I’d want that conversation to go as if it was being delivered to me and I was the person on the other end. And I also remind people in leadership that you have an opportunity to lead if you don’t like the way this is going. And I think that’s another one of those candor is kind of call kind of talks, we have a phrase in my company, which is there’s no, we’re virtual company now. So it’s not quite the same impact. But back in the day, when we had an office before that little thing we survived. I used to say we will not do water cooler, character assassinations, if you have a problem with your teammate, you better not go have a character conversation about that person at the watercooler at the coffee pot, or the lunch break room, whatever the case is, you better go talk to that person. I see it both in my personal life. And we’re easy to text, how we feel on the sly about a certain situation. I’ve always had an open door policy and in my world, and I say listen to door’s always open for you to come tell me exactly what you think sucks and my company. I’m not the guy who will sit there and pretend like I know everything. If you’ve got value to add, just bring the value to the conversation, if you see areas of improvement bring the areas of improvement, which is not them taking the leap, but them saying you know, from my perspective, I’d like to see if we could change this policy. And again, I’ve always been a person who said, There is no such thing as in my company, because we’ve always done it that way. Right. And I think that’s where a lot of times companies and individuals who are in leadership find that they run up against ceilings because the company has a culture or the structure is there. And it’s like turning an ocean liner as opposed to navigating a little kayak. But I think to your point of this candor and being nice, I think the word that is floating around, at least in some of the CE O groups that I’m in and leadership is this battle with this newer younger. Again, I’m not trying to get into this demographic, but we’ve got boomers in the market. We’ve got Gen X in the market, we’ve got y we got millennials, and it’s trying to get all of that blending together when each of those demographic profiles care about different things, but they’re all in the company. And so it matters to Boomer at this point doesn’t matter to the millennial disappoint. And somehow we’ve gotten this right and wrong conversation going on. And there’s a lot of character assassination going back between a generation against a generation and I think that’s the challenge of it. You just ship today, right? And you’ve got to be able to manage the lifestyle of what this person wants against the dreams and desires of what this person wants, and then still keep the ship moving where everyone’s working together towards that common goal. And it is the balancing act of leadership. And it is sometimes some hard conversations and accountability is, I think, always at the root, of course, correction. Right. And sometimes that’s where some of those tougher conversations come in. I, Aaron, just this morning, in our kickoff in our stand up this morning, I jumped on for a few minutes, I had a full schedule, obviously, joining you today was one of those items that was high priority for me. So I told my team, listen, I’ve got some things to do. And I found out there was a problem with one of our clients websites, we have a digital marketing agency, and there was an issue and our head of web dev was on the call. And I heard what he said. And I said, let me just ask question, is that a temporary fix or permanent fix to the problem? It was a temporary fix. I said, Well, I’m gonna ask you as the head of web dev to come up with a permanent solution for this client, not a temporary fix, because it sounds like you did a temporary fix last week. Now we’re having a problem again. So I’m asking you and I did this in front of our whole group. I said, you’re the head of web dev, I need a permanent solution for this client, can I get a permanent solution from you? And he says, Yes, great. Please get that on. Andy’s get that to Andy, because I don’t want to hear about this twice. Why we’re hearing about it again, like you had an opportunity to fix it last week. And you put a bandaid on it. You are the head of web dev last I heard it right. We didn’t beat him up. But we’re like you are the head of web dev True or true? He’s like, Yeah, well, okay, well then get me a permanent fix for this guy. Because a client expects a permanent fix, not a band aid. And if the permanent fix hurts, we still owe them that responsibility to tell them about if it means they’ve got to redesign the website because their theme is broken. We got to tell them that, right. So that’s part of leadership. And again, to the point of candor, and to the point of accountability, and to the point of I didn’t say it rude, I was like, Can we get a permanent fix out of this? Okay, then let’s work towards that. And sometimes you got to call that when it is what it is,
Aaron Lee 31:50
yes, call it what it is. Name it, the facts. That’s where we got to start.
Darrell Evans 31:54
Right? If it hadn’t broke when you did last week’s thing, we wouldn’t have this conversation day. But now this is the second time I’ve heard it, we owe the client expects us to solve the problem. So get me a permanent solution, even if it means we have to rebuild the website, I don’t care what the fix is, give me the permanent fix. And we’ll back into what it costs will back into full back into the rest but get that company a permanent fix.
Aaron Lee 32:15
I think there’s a combination. In this example. We’re talking about candor, we’re talking about facts. So you get a fact this morning. And based on the fact what do we need to do now? Yes, we know what we need to do. But how do we get there? And let’s actually get there, as is that journey we’ve been talking about, and candor, we get unstuck. We get off the starting block, but we also make sure people have what they need to be successful when they started on that path.
Darrell Evans 32:44
Yeah, it’s interesting, because like you said, it was a fact we didn’t cause the fact the website broke. We didn’t break it, the website broke. That’s what happens in the digital economy. But Step two was make a decision based on the fact Well, the website broke last week, also, and seems as though he did a temporary fix. And now the website’s broke again today. So step two is where the problem lies, right? So let’s make a new decision. Let’s figure out what the permanent solution is to this problem. Obviously, you got to take a temporary minute right now. It’s like you got to get get the website back up. But then let’s solve for the permanent solution, which is step three, what’s the plan to get them a permanent solution, and then let’s present that to them. It doesn’t matter what it costs, let’s figure out what we need to do to get it permanent. Because in our world break fix is a nightmare for us, like break fix, but someone’s technology is just a nightmare slows us down for the reason we were hired in the first place, and we have to have the website up. But we can’t be in break fix every week just kills our productivity.
Aaron Lee 33:36
We’ve covered generations, we’ve covered communication styles, we’ve talked about uncertainty, as I’m sitting here, reflecting back on our conversation, we’ve hit so many of the pillars that were the motivation behind what I wrote about in the new generation leader, because all of these are dynamics that we have to face. I mean, I asked you the question that actually started that whole journey, which is, what have you learned? Or what do you know now as a leader that you wish you had known earlier in your career?
Darrell Evans 34:07
Oh, wow, that’s a rich question. What do I know now that I wish I would have learned earlier in my career, I’m gonna start by saying this error. And there are things I learned that I wish I would have executed earlier in my career. So that’s one point, I think is obvious to be made. Because any leader who can be honest with themselves with self reflection, and look at the times that they stumbled, they would actually say, did I know that? Or did I not know that? And so sometimes it’s our own stubbornness to be patient and to have a little bit more calm in the midst of the storm, which is, again, something I call one of my superpowers. But if I were to pick out one thing today in leadership that I wish I knew then and when I say then I would say, I think today, one of the things I’ve developed is really being able to communicate and ask questions of the individual people, team members that are coming into the organization and really get crystal clear about that. their goals and their dreams and their visions, because they’re not there for me. They’re not there for the company brand name. They’re not there. They’re there for their reasons. And I think I would have loved to have adopted that earlier in my journey. Because what I’ve learned, those of us who are old enough to remember a quote from Zig Ziglar, rest in peace, he passed away five, six years ago, he said, If you help enough other people get what they want, you ultimately get what you want. And I heard that quote in the 90s. And I always thought about it from my own journey as a solo practitioner. But when I started getting bigger companies with bigger employees, I had 100 People in our mortgage company, when we own the mortgage company, we’ve got both freelancers, we got three different types of people that work with our agency today. I think in that case, I would have gotten more crystal clear about really what they want, and really extracting from them, Aaron, helping them to build a bigger picture for what they want. What I’ve learned, Aaron is really interested me and those of us who are leaders who are in that fraction of a percentage of people who take that role. It’s surprising how many people don’t believe in themselves. And it’s also surprising how many organizations don’t allow people to believe bigger than they are, or believe up, they want them to come in and just do the thing. And so I think for me, I’ve noticed that if I could have asked better questions about their goals, dreams and visions, we might have found better alignment and better roles for them, where sometimes maybe we put them in a role that wasn’t right for them, because we needed someone in the role. And so I think it would have helped me with better team building. And again, everyone’s not meant to stay at your organization forever. That’s just the way it works. But I think that’s maybe one thing from a leadership perspective that I might have benefited from learning and being a bit more focused on earlier, it’s been a pretty much like the last seven years, it’s been like, now I beat on that drum to make sure that I’m only hiring growth minded people who have a vision for their future. And then I want to make sure that what we are planning to do, can help them get closer to them.
Aaron Lee 36:53
There’s so much about what drives us every day that comes out of that motivation. And so finding that tapping into that recognizing even what’s going on outside of this job in this role that’s lighting a fire under people and tapping into that is is a game changer. Because like you said, not everybody’s here for and most people are not here just to do the job or finish the task. But they’re here to enable their own dreams and their own goals.
Darrell Evans 37:23
Yeah, when we started the agency, 12 years ago, I got crystal clear that there were going to be people who wanted to go off and start their own businesses. I know a lot of companies get afraid of that. I encourage my company that if you’re a creative genius, if you’re a graphic arts specialist, if you’re a creative video editor, if you’re a content map person, if you’re an ADS person, immediate person, and you have an interest of running your own thing, let me help you figure that out, let me get you the experience you need. Here, we’ve had six people in our company go off start their own businesses out of 12 years, that’s not a ton, but that six out of 12, we let them run their side gig at the agency, we actually have hired them on the side for projects we don’t do at the agency. And so I think that’s also a change in leadership thinking, right? Let’s not put a box around who they are, let’s give them room to do it. And you’ll be surprised that they don’t actually want to go take the risk of doing it all 100% on their own, they want the comfort of the job, they want to do a great job in that role. And then they want to earn some income on the side with their craft and with their specialty. And that’s been a good hybrid situation for my industry where I’m currently at. And the more we can support that person as a leader, the more we can support them and grow them. One of our best team members. In the 12 years we’ve had literally sent me one of the most kindest things she had not just for me, but my former co founder. She got hired by HubSpot, one of the biggest marketing platforms on the planet. And we hired her a year or so out of college. And she literally took over our content department, I mean, in her mid 20s. And we just gave her room and we gave her coaching, we gave her guidance. Eventually the opportunity came, she sent us a note saying I would have never got this opportunity had it not been for the role that you allowed me to run over there. And so for me, that’s just the biggest joy. Did I want to see her leave organization? No, she was great. But I love the fact that she’s having a fantastic opportunity. And she’s still thriving over there. And she’s crushing it. Of course, she’s crushing it over there, right. And those are the things that I get the most joy out of as a leader and is developing people and giving them an opportunity to do what they want to do. And if it means they’re going to be with us for 10 years. Great. That means they’re going to be with us for two or three. Great, but that’s one of those key factors, I think in leadership. Just go back to that one this morning. This gentleman who runs our dev, I’m giving him room to figure that out. I’m gonna give him the answer. I’m not gonna tell him what to do. We’re gonna give him the answer. So we want him to come through, but he needed the directive to get a permanent solution for that, like we got to get a permanent solution. So it’s that double edge of encouragement leadership, a little bit of hard love sometimes but really saying I trust you right because what I said was I trust you to go get the solution. You are the head you got a solution right? You can come up with one if you need some help. Horse Andy’s there. And um, there, we got resources. It’s the good part about leadership. And sometimes that comes with a lot of patience because sometimes you might see the answer that they don’t see at the moment.
Aaron Lee 40:09
And my friend Jeremy, who was on episode 22 says, sometimes you need that to buy for wrapped in velvet, just enough to feel it but not to actually purchase.
Darrell Evans 40:21
So Jeremy must come from the school of that I grew up in where spankings were still allowed to now. So weapons were still allowed now, so So that’s funny.
Aaron Lee 40:33
We’ve covered a lot of territory today. And I’ve thoroughly enjoyed our conversation and everything we’ve touched on, and hearing the practical examples from your leadership and your world. So wrapping up this conversation for today, but for any of our listeners who want to connect with you going forward, what’s the best way for them to find you?
Darrell Evans 40:52
Thank you, Aaron, for hosting this show and hosting today’s conversation I really appreciate and just want to give thanks to you for holding the space for the conversation. I’ve enjoyed it immensely. So wherever you’re listening to the new generation leader podcast, if you’re interested, I have a podcast as well. It is called the mind shift podcast with Darrell Evans. And so whatever platform you are hearing Aaron an ion today, you can look in your search bar and look that up. And that’s not of interest to you. You can find me anywhere online at Mr. Darrell Evans, if you want to connect.
Aaron Lee 41:24
Well, that’s great. We’ll link to there’s podcast, the mind shift podcast and his social media in our show notes at New Generation leader dot F M. Thanks again, Darryl. I appreciate you being on and taking some time today. And I look forward to continuing the conversation on the road ahead.
Darrell Evans 41:39
My pleasure, Aaron. Thanks again for having me. And I hope your audience got a couple of nuggets out of today’s conversation.
Aaron Lee 41:45
I’m sure they did, because I sure did. Thanks, Darrell. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the new generation leader podcast. Subscribe today on your favorite podcasting platform, ready to solve your leadership crisis. Download the show notes and unlock your true leadership potential at New Generation leader.com/podcast. Thanks for listening today. And we look forward to seeing you next time on the new generation leader podcast