Hey, what's up, home frys?

This is your host, Neal.

And I am so glad that you joined us again for today's episode.

Today I'm going to be teaching you about tradition and how tradition can sometimes be very costly to you, both in leadership and in business.

In fact, I'm going to challenge the status quo that just because something's always been done this way doesn't mean it's beneficial.

In fact, I will tell you that while tradition can be valuable at times, tradition can also override innovation.

And if tradition overrides innovation, man, growth is sacrificed in those moments.

Guys, I'm fired up for today's show, and I hope you are too.

Get ready.

This is your captain speaking.

We want to let you know we've been cleared for takeoff.

We have clear skies today with no winds, so we are expecting a smooth and highly enjoyable flight.

However, should you experience some personal turbulence, don't worry as you've chosen the right airline.

As we are trained in navigating unexpected bumps, our destination today is high performance and success.

Sit back, relax, get hyped, or do whatever you do.

As we too are pumped for today's flight, we understand you have options when you fly, and we are grateful that you have chosen to fly with us today.

We recognize by choosing to fly Nil Reyes, you are committed to growing personal development and reaching higher than you ever have before.

Enjoy today's flight, be blessed, and remember, the best is yet to come.

What's up, Champion?

This is your host, Neal Reyes, and.

I want to welcome you to the Executive Perspective.

For years, I struggled to answer the question, what do you do for a living?

Why?

Because most people who ask only expect to hear one thing.

I am an executive with a deep level of understanding of business, operations, leadership and technology.

I'm also the president and founder of a worldwide ministry and CEO of an executive coaching and consulting firm.

My number one passion is people, and I receive significant gratitude in life from sowing into others and encouraging them as they grow to achieve their fullest potential.

If you're a high performance individual like me, or you're simply ready to take your business leadership or inner potential to the next level, then strap in because I'm locked in and all in.

This is the Executive Perspective.

What's up, Champion?

This is your host, Neal, and I want to welcome you back to the Executive Perspective with Neal Reyes.

Man, I'm fired up for today's show.

Today, I'm going to teach you something that's really simplistic and can be applied to any area of your life, like most of the things we teach here.

But it's something that's super simplistic and that if you hang on to and connect with, I believe it can change your life.

But not just at work or in business, but also at home.

The principle I'm going to talk to you about today is what I like to refer to as the ham hock story.

Now, you may have heard a version of this before, but I'm going to walk you through a story today, and then I'm going to take you through why I feel this can be so detrimental within mindsets of people.

And usually what I find is when people believe in the ham hock story, and you'll know what that is in a minute.

It's something that's usually not just impacts one person and not just two people, but actually an entire culture of an organization.

In fact, I will also tell you that I've seen where this impacts entire households or generations to come.

And when I'm working with people on coaching, whether if I'm coaching executive teams on how to scale and grow or how to improve on their leadership, or whether if I'm working one on one with clients, oftentimes I come across things that I would define as the ham hock story.

This is what the ham hock story is, the ham hock story.

And I'm just going to take you through the story, and if you've heard a different version, it's okay.

But here's the ham hock story.

So one day, little Suzy and her mom are in the kitchen and they're making a ham for Christmas dinner.

She's pretty excited about this.

Little Susie's about 5 years old, and she's really inquisitive.

She's very keen.

She's very smart, as most children are, but at the same time, she's also filled with curiosity.

So she's watching her mom go ahead and prep the ham to put in the oven.

But as she's watching her mom, she notices that right before she puts it in the oven, she cuts the ham hock off of the ham, put some foil on it, and slides it in the oven.

Well, little Susie starts beginning asking questions, mommy, why did you cut that off?

What is that?

She goes like, well, little Susie, that's the ham hock.

And she goes, oh, why'd you cut that off?

And she goes, well, because you're supposed to cut it off whenever you put a ham in the oven.

She goes, but why?

And she goes, because that's how we do It, Little Susie.

Yeah, but why, Mama?

Well, sheesh.

That's a good question, Little Susie.

I don't know.

You know, let's call Grandma, because Grandma's the one that taught me how to do it, but I don't know why we cut it off.

Let's call Grandma.

So they call great Grandma, and when the mother gets on the phone with grandma, she talks to Grandma.

She says, mom talking to Grandma.

Now, Mom, I'm here with little Susie, and we just got done prepping the ham for Christmas dinner, but Susie watched me cut the ham hock off and was asking me why I do that.

And I didn't have an answer for her other than just, that's how we've always done it, because that's the way you trained me to do it.

Mom, why do we cut the ham hock off?

Grandma thinks for a second and says, you know what?

I don't really know.

That's just how my mom always did it.

And so that's how I've always done it, and that's how I taught you kids to do it.

Let's get great Grandma on the phone.

Now, this family is blessed with longevity.

And so what they do is they three way now, Great Grandma on the phone, and great grandma answers the phone, and she comes on and grandma says, hey, good Grandma, this is Grandma, and I've got little Suzy on the line with us and her mom.

And basically little Suzy was helping her mom prep Christmas dinner, and they just got done putting the ham in the oven and they covered it with foil.

But right before they did, little Susie saw her mama cut the ham hock off just the way I always did, the way you taught me, and just the way I always saw you do it.

But little Susie wants to know why we cut that off.

And her mom didn't know an answer, and so she called me, but I didn't know the answer either.

So, Great Grandma, why do we cut the ham hock off?

Great Grandma goes, oh, that's simple.

It wouldn't fit in my oven if I didn't cut it off.

So I had to.

That is the story of the ham hock story.

Now, why do I tell you that on a podcast that's focused on leadership, business strategy, and personal development?

Because it's one of the clearest ways that I've learned in business to describe to people when they continue doing things, just because that's how it's always been done.

You know, I will tell you that if you want to break apart as an exceptional leader, there's so many ways you can do that, but one of the best ways you can do that is by constantly challenging yourself to get better.

And part of what happens when you challenge yourself to get better, you'll eventually challenge those around you to get better with you.

Now, understand what I mean here?

I'm not talking about challenging people in an abrasive manner or in an aggressive way.

There are ways that when you lead, especially when you lead by example and when you lead with heart, not emotion, but with heart, that when you lead, others are going to want to follow.

You know, some of the things that I train my managers on that work beneath me.

One of the things I explained to them is that when you're a manager or you're a leader, executive doesn't matter, senior manager doesn't matter.

You can always tell who the great leaders are.

And here's a mark, here is one great mark of how you can tell who the great leaders are.

When leaders go in a room full of followers, it's not real difficult to lead in those rooms.

I'm not saying sometimes there's not challenges with personalities or, you know, systems or processes or things that need improvement, but it's not real difficult to lead in a room full of followers because you have a lot of follower mentality within that room.

Now, that's not a ding on anybody.

Not everybody desires to be a leader within business.

Not everybody wants to be a manager or senior manager or executive management or C suite.

Not all people want that.

They may all want the salaries, but they don't all want that.

Because what comes with that, you know, it often comes with the salary, is also the responsibility and the accountability.

Oh, man, that speaks right there.

Maybe I should do a podcast on that.

What often comes with the salary is the accountability and the responsibility.

And not everybody wants that.

But what I explain to leaders is that when you go in a room full of followers, that's not a difficult environment to lead in because the people in that room have follower mentality.

They're just looking for who can lead them correctly, and that's who they're going to follow.

But when you walk in a room that's already filled with other leaders and those other leaders are willing to turn to you or look to you or follow your advice or follow your expertise or follow your example, what you model as excellence, now that person is an outstanding leader, because when you can place them in a room where a room filled with leaders are willing to follow that leader, man, that is impressive.

You know, I had a podcast I did Earlier a few episodes ago, where I talked about the difference between leading through a place of authority and through a place of influence.

There are times where you'll have someone who's an authority walk in and all the other subordinates are there, even if they're leaders, and they're going to follow that person simply out of a place of authority.

So there is a way that you can lead out of authority, but the most effective way to lead people is by influence.

And when you take a person who's in a place of authority and you cover that with influence, man, you now have a potent leader.

You have a powerful leader within your midst.

And when that leader knows how to lead with heart, not emotions, but heart, it's felt as genuine, it's felt as unique.

Well, one of the things I will tell you that I feel personally is one of the strongest things you can do as a leader is to constantly challenge the status quo.

Now, again, not in an abrasive manner, not in an argumentative manner, but when you can constantly challenge what you're doing to check to see if it's still the right thing to be doing, if it's still the right focus, or if it's still the best thing you can do.

Well, now you set yourself up for growth.

Now, I'm going to issue some caution with this as well.

In fact, if I had some salt shakers here, and I had a salt shaker and a pepper shaker and a shaker filled with caution, then I'm going to sprinkle a little caution on this conversation.

Because if someone takes us out of context, well, they're going to have a little trial by fire and they're going to find out a little different.

But listen to what I'm saying, because what I'm telling you will work.

This is tried and true.

If you go and challenge other people without understanding the work they put in, or if you go and challenge systems or things within your business, let's say you're new to your environment and you walk in and you see all kinds of stuff that's messed up.

If you just start making wholesale changes from day one, you're going to burn some bridges and you're going to dampen your influence within that environment.

Because there's a chance that the people who are around you or the people who've been there before you, whether they're still there or not.

But the people that are there in that environment, they most likely either worked for those people who are no longer around, or they worked with or alongside them.

But in one way or another, they most likely had relationships with them.

And unless those people were toxic, they had meaningful relationships with them, which usually comes with respect.

And if you come in and start critiquing or criticizing things that others have done, even though you may not know those people or who did it, you will critique the memory that those people have, the respect that those people have for them.

In other words, you'll critique the people that those people respect that are no longer there, there.

And that's not the best way to build influence.

But that being said, sometimes things do need to be challenged, but it's always best to find out, hey, I recognize we're doing this certain process.

Can anyone give me some advice around or clarity about why do we do this and what does it benefit us as an organization?

I just simply want to understand our processes.

And as they explain that to you, sometimes you find there are things that while you'd like to improve them, you just can't, or at least not in that instant, without putting new systems in place or new processes in place or something of that nature.

On the flip side, though, there are often times where just because people are doing it, they'll maintain it just because it's the ham hock story.

They just continue doing the same thing over and over again because, well, that's just the way it's always been done.

I'm going to take you through a couple points and then give you some coaching on this, and I'm going to challenge you at the end with something as well.

But it's something that I believe will be beneficial for you and help you.

Now, I got my green tea with me today, so please excuse me as I drink.

And I hope I don't slurp because I don't want to, you know, be disrespectful.

But the first thing I want to talk to you about with the ham hock story, or the first point I want to talk to you about, is the hidden cost.

Specifically, the hidden cost of that's just how we've always done it.

So the hidden cost of that's just how we've always done it.

The first thing that you can do with this hidden cost by just doing the ham hock story is it can create cultural complacency.

Man, I'm telling you, I could spend the entire podcast just on this bullet point alone.

It creates cultural complacency.

In other words, people begin to get complacent.

They stop striving, they stop trying to grow, and they stop trying to innovate in other words, they stop stretching.

And if you have a company stay in that stagnant mode too long and after a while that business can go under.

It's what I refer to as sometimes in business we have things that are considered just keeping the lights on.

They're the things we do day after day.

And there or there's expenses we have within the business that you just have to do because it's just keeping the lights on.

I remember I heard this story a few years ago and I didn't hear it.

I actually read about it and I don't recall how long ago it was, but it might have been about five or 10 years ago.

But I had read about this story where there was a plane that was flying in, filled with passengers.

I don't know how big it was, but I kind of pictured like a normal sized plane and it was flying into an airport.

But right as it was getting to land on its descent, it recognized there was a problem with its landing gear.

And specifically, I think one of the things that happened is one of the legs that had the wheels on it, one of the wheels wasn't coming down.

And so the pilot was very concerned about that.

And so what he started to do is he set a pattern where they were circling around the Runway or around the airport, just circling and hovering while they try to see if they could fix this wheel or if the airport could give them some type of advice, if air control could give them some type of advice on the best way to land.

Well, this was a very wooded area around this airport and they hovered and hovered and hovered.

And after a while, what ended up happening is that airplane ran out of gas and they crashed in the woods and all the passengers perished.

Man, I'm telling you, it was a really sad story when I read that.

But here's where the problem with that lies.

They had enough fuel to land at any time.

And while their landing gear was damaged, they could have set it down on the Runway, had emergency crews waiting for them.

And while it wouldn't have been a smooth landing, most likely we've seen times in the news where other people land with damaged landing gears.

Even though it's rough, they can land because it's smooth and they can clear the area and emergency crews can respond right away.

But when you crash a plane in the woods, that is one of the worst landings you can have.

Because as you're going into the trees, it's breaking the plane apart and it's impacting the whole of that airplane.

And anyways, Like I said, everyone perished.

Well, in business that's also can happen when you stay in a pattern of just keeping the lights on for too long.

You might hover for a while and you do good, but after a while, sales start to decline, the money's not coming in the way it once was, and now all of a sudden you're going out of business.

This is what it's like to hover the Runway and not be prepared for the changes that are coming.

In other words, if you get complacent with the ham hock story of doing things because they've just always been done that way, this can impact an organization significantly.

That's why you have so many organizations today.

Even myself, and I'm a young man, but even myself, I can think of businesses that were just booming, big time businesses when I was growing up with my family.

You know, I'm a Gen X kid.

And so growing up through the 80s, man, I can think of so many big time stores from back then that today I don't see around anywhere.

And while I'm not going to say that they all had the ham hock story happen to them, I know enough about executive management and leading businesses now that I now see patterns out there of how those businesses went from being an amazing business to dying a slow death and fading and they no longer exist.

And I can see times, I can paint patterns where other businesses that were prominent, their competitors in the same space were doing so well that someone had the genius idea of buying the failing store and it was just a matter of time before it took that prominent business down as well.

Because what they bought was a sinking ship.

What they bought was bad debt.

Oftentimes those stores had bad debt because they were in bad locations or they had bad systems in place.

But what they also bought when they did that, because they kept most of the workforce, maybe not all, but most, they also bought the cultural inefficiencies that had been trained into that business.

Now, I'm not saying that those businesses were filled with people who weren't good people or had a lot of prominence or promise.

I mean, but for the ones who had promise, they went on to somewhere else.

If they were great in that organization or they had the ability to be great, but it was never allowed, or if they were stymied, I'm pretty sure they went on to find another place where they could be great instead.

But this is why businesses often fail because of the ham hock story.

Continuing to do things the same way.

They've just always been done.

The next point that I have for you, I shouldn't say point, but underneath the hidden cost of that's just how we've done it.

The second part I have for you is that it discourages innovation, which I mentioned before, but it can also silence rising voices.

Man, that's a big one right there.

Just a second ago I talked about that.

Sometimes you have people that are budding talents or there are people that have significant contribution to give to the business and they're eager and excited to do so.

And yes, I get that sometimes those people may have a lot of zeal, but they need a lot of training or they need some grooming or some seasoning within business.

But there are other times where leaders just won't give them the opportunity to breathe.

In other words, they won't give them the opportunity to rise.

By silencing those rising voices, it can kill the culture of an organization and eventually take the organization down.

Or you can have one department or one sector of the business that does amazing, but the other sector is hurting and they can't figure out why.

And usually it's a culture problem or it's something like this.

You have a ham hock story that's happening and it's what it's doing is it's killing innovation and it's silencing rising voices.

Another hidden cost is that it can lead to inefficiencies or inefficient systems and overall lost revenue.

Remember I talked about earlier that when you have a business that begins to dwindle, if you don't make rapid changes, then after a while that's that plane hovering the Runway.

And even though it could land at any time and it wouldn't be ideal, they're waiting for perfect conditions, perfect conditions until they run out of fuel and now they can't make it back to the Runway even if they wanted and they go down into the forest and they light up in flames.

This is a significant issue.

Now I want to tell you that unfortunately this mindset often gets passed down.

If it's a family run business, sometimes it can get passed down from generation to generation.

If it's a corporate business, it can also get passed down through leadership or through the generations or cycle leadership.

But what also happens, it can create stagnant.

It can create stagnant corporations or stagnant businesses.

In other words, what was once excellence that the company did, left unchecked, after a while, it can drop to just enough.

I've given other shows where I've talked about what I Consider like the four points of achievement or of high performers or of excellence.

You have the lowest, which is not enough, then you have just enough, then you have good enough, and then you have excellence.

You know, when you're constantly growing as a striver and a high performer and as a leader, whatever you're doing today to operate and whatever output you're creating, that's excellence today.

If you look back in just a few short months, your excellence today should have increased or grown even more.

Because you're growing.

That's how you measure that.

But if you do the same thing you're doing today and three, four years down the road, you're still operating at that same performance.

While that same performance may have once been excellence, now it may only be just enough or even not enough.

Why?

Because you're not growing with the times now.

Gosh, I just felt a tug of my spirit.

And I'm going to share this real quick, even though we're not going to get into this today, because that's not what this is about.

But I will tell you that.

Understand, I also have a strong ministry background as well.

Okay.

I also have Neil Reyes ministries.

It's a 501C3 that me and my wife founded.

I travel around as a speaker with that, but also with this business as well, and teach on leadership and personal development and business strategy and a lot of other things.

But one of the things I want to tell you that I felt the tug of my heart with is this thing that I'm telling you about, the ham hock story and this thing about what was excellence once, but you keep operating by that now.

It's just enough or not enough.

That same pattern that I told you that kept that plane flying around the Runway when it could have landed at any time, but instead it crashed in the forest.

That's the same exact mentality that takes down a lot of marriages.

Oh, man, I'm telling you, that's strong right there.

That thing can be a relationship killer.

Someone might say, neil, I thought this is leadership.

Hey, if you're married, you are a leader.

Whether you're the head of the household, as the husband, or whether you're the wife, you are a leader.

You are a leader, especially if you have children, you're called to lead.

You have to help your spouse, that wingman, that person that you're with, you got to help them.

And if you turn around and just have the hammock story and you just, you know, you quit trying, you quit growing, I'm going to tell you that's where couples grow apart.

That's where they can go down in flames.

And remember, this is a leadership podcast, but it also focuses on business strategy, personal development, and that is, without a shadow of a doubt, a personal development comment context is what I would tell you.

In fact, I'll tell you sometimes when I'm working with people and they want to improve their businesses, sometimes they want to jump right in and improve that thing that they need.

But sometimes what it actually starts with is some deeper things beneath the surface.

Maybe they're not their best at work because they're not their best at home.

And maybe when they leave home, home is such a wreck and such a mess that when they get to work, they just can't function at their highest because they're distracted by the things that are going on at home.

You know, it's hard to go into a business and build a business that's going to succeed and strive while you have a home that's crumbling and burning up at the house.

I'm not saying you can't have people who become successful in those moments because clearly people will neglect the marriage or the household and throw themselves all into work.

But for what?

What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and to lose his own soul?

Now, I'm going to go on to our next one.

But as I talk about that, the one other thing I want to mention is that what used to be for you, best practice now, now it may just only be a bottleneck for you.

I'm going to say that again.

What used to be best practice for you now may just be a bottleneck.

The next point that I want to take you to is that leaders who don't evolve can become obsolete.

I'm going to say that again.

Remember, this is point two.

Leaders who don't evolve or refuse to evolve or grow.

Leaders who don't evolve can become obsolete.

Now, I will tell you that in many cases, leaders who don't evolve or grow or learn to change, as things grow, they become obsolete.

That's a significant thing right there.

It's a significant comment.

You know, I can think of when I was raised with my parents, when I was little, my dad who raised us, he turned around and he ran a restaurant.

I won't name the business, but he ran a very successful restaurant.

In fact, I'm in Texas.

If I mention the name, everybody's going to go, I love eating at that place.

But it's not really around anymore.

What happened?

This was a business that their business model was when they would open a restaurant.

They would only open a restaurant if they had the cash to open the restaurant.

In other words, they were debt free and they never went into debt to open a restaurant.

They had one of the strongest cultures and one of the strongest work ethics around that whole entire corporation.

And the person who owned the organization had started off in his own restaurant, running it day in, day out.

And as that corporation grew and got larger and larger, what ended up happening was they would have other people who would then grow to maybe a vice president or a senior vice president.

And as they grew more, they started having area vice presidents beneath them and then maybe other people.

And they had general managers for their stores.

But no one was allowed in that court culture to grow in senior management.

They weren't allowed to grow in the corporate office unless they had once worked in a restaurant and worked their way up through the ranks.

That was their culture.

You may not agree with that, but what it ensured was that everyone at the home office was always connected with what the operations of the business were really like.

And they always, always focused on never opening a new location unless they had the cash to do so.

I remember traveling around with my parents when they would go to these new openings, because my dad was one of the ones who would go to them.

And as we did that, man, they were powerful.

I remember what the business would do is they would open up a new location and they would promote someone to be the general manager that new location.

And then he usually had three or four managers beneath him that were going to work there among all their other staff.

But then they would take top performing managers from all over the country, from different places and send them in there so that when they had their grand opening, they all pitched in and helped that place work.

It helped to ensure that the recipes were consistent.

And because they made everything from scratch in their kitchens from scratch kitchens that gave a little bit of wiggle room where it could lose consistency because they weren't pre packaging and sending things out.

But they turned around, they'd send all these managers in there, the best of the best.

And this place was a booming restaurant and it was significant.

And they paid their managers well, but their managers had to work hard for that money.

Well, when they did that, what ended up happening is eventually as the company grew, they started bringing on outside talent into their executive management pool and into their VP ranks and up.

And as they did that, they started bringing in people who had never worked in a restaurant.

Not just their restaurant, but any restaurant.

These are people who went to School, got degrees, were educated by some professor in a class that had never ran a restaurant either.

Now, some of them may have, but many of them didn't.

And now they're going in the real, real world trying to tell this restaurant that already had a recipe for success what it was that they need to do to change.

And they started convincing them to do things that went against that company culture.

Now, I want to tell you that that company culture that they had, because I'm talking about the ham hock story, they weren't doing ham hock things, but they were true to themselves and what made that business a success.

But as they started growing in that business, they eventually wanted to grow and expand faster.

So they took on outside world philosophies, and they turned around and started hiring people from the outside who would come in and say, you know what?

We need to turn around and acquire debt.

We need to go into debt to open restaurants.

Even though that was always a saving grace and pinnacle for that business business.

But as they did that, they started acquiring other people that were in that same market, their competitors who were not doing well at all.

And they would then turn around and buy those organizations out.

But instead of closing them down or moving the restaurants, they'd assume their same bad locations.

And what happened with that?

Well, they slapped the new name on the outside of the building, but the same staff that was there before is the same staff that's there now.

So the same lousy service they had before, in many cases, same lousy service they're having now.

And in addition to that, the same bad location they were in before, now they've got the same bad location now.

So sometimes, you know, you can have such a bad location that even though you're doing all the right things to succeed, if it's a bad location, sometimes you just can't overcome a bad location.

And as they'd acquired those debts, now all of a sudden the company's in trouble.

Well, what happens to the executive they brought in from the outside with that bright idea?

They bail, they leave, they jump ship, and they go somewhere else.

Now, I'm not saying it's wrong for people to move away from jobs, but what happened was they gave them a suggestion, saw it for a little bit, and then left.

But after damaging their culture, I'm telling you that these things really impact and matter.

Those people came in, did wholesale changes like I was talking about earlier, without examining what worked and why it worked.

Now, I don't doubt that there were things that needed to improve at those Executive levels.

I don't doubt that there were ways that they could improve and made things better.

But what you don't do is you don't cut the pay of your workforce.

That's making it a success.

And then start acquiring debt when you're not supposed to.

In other words, they stopped taking care of their workforce, which really killed the culture.

And then in addition to that, they turned around and they started acquiring a lot of really bad debt.

Now, this is just one organization I mentioned, but remember I told you earlier that there's a lot of big organizations that I can think of that have existed over time, and nowadays you don't even hear about them anymore.

And even in the last three to five years, if I were tracking a list, I could read you big stores that we all know right now that are either currently closing down, going out of business, have shut down large parts of their organization, or they're just no longer around at all.

Man, I can just go down the list with you.

But it happens because leaders must evolve as they're growing.

And leaders who don't evolve, they can become obsolete.

But if a leader can become obsolete by not evolving and growing, then it's fair to say that whatever the thing is that they're leading, that thing can also become obsolete.

It can disappear.

Now, the next thing I have under second, the second point that leaders who don't evolve can become obsolete is that businesses must adapt or die.

I know it sounds kind of strong, but businesses must adapt or die.

And the first step is oftentimes questioning the process.

I'm going to tell you in business, one of the things I did a couple years ago, even in the organization I'm in now, as a few years ago, I made the change within my structure that I pulled my leaders in one day.

And this is after spending time in prayer and seeing and studying patterns to where I told them that going forward, I wanted them to challenge everything, any process we were helping the business with, anything that we had been doing for years, anything in our development, anything.

And I remember I run an IT shop, but anything in our development, anything with our databases, anything in the programs we have, whether if it's a software as a service in the cloud, or if it's something we have on prem, anything we have with our security, our user practices, I'm talking everything I told them I wanted them to be able to start questioning everything.

But from the eyes of why do we do it?

Why is it important and is this still the right thing to do, or is there something better that should take its place.

And I'm going to tell you that right there.

That right there.

If you're listening, if you write down those simple things I just mentioned, I believe you can build an entire consulting business just off that wisdom alone.

Now, that's not all it takes to have a consulting business because you got to have the things that go behind it.

And I bring a lot of things with it from the executive perspective and from my years of doing this.

But if you can do those simple things, man, it'll change the way you do business.

Now, what you're going to find is there are some things that you've doing that you're doing right now.

And it makes all the sense in the world.

You need to keep doing that.

That's a pivot for your business or an anchor point for your business.

In other words, it's something that helps your business succeed and people expect of you and your brand.

But there are other things that you've been doing all along because you've just been doing them because it's a ham hock story.

Or what's really detrimental is in business you're doing something just because you witnessed someone else doing it.

In other words, you saw some other business doing it so you thought that you needed to do it as well.

Well, that's not always the best thing to do in business.

Sometimes there are.

But oftentimes you don't do what the competition is doing just because they're doing it.

Oftentimes what the competition is doing is because it resonates with who they are and what they do.

And if it resonates with you and your model as well, then that's fine.

But you have to find how you what your own model of that thing is going to be.

But when you just pick up what someone else is doing, man, you know, let's equate it to this.

Let's say you have grass in your front yard and your neighbor across the street also has grass.

But let's say they have a grass like Bermuda grass, and let's say you have some type of grass like fescue or something.

Well, I'm going to tell you that the types of things that your neighbor across the street needs to use to treat his grass and fertilize it oftentimes is not the same kind of fertilizer you're supposed to use on your fescue because what can make one grass flourish can actually burn and kill another grass.

Now, I'm not a horticulturist or whatever you call them.

But that being said, I'm telling you, this is real right here.

That's why you don't just take on something else that you see someone else doing unless it's congruent to you, unless it's something that resonates with you.

And then even if it is, you find your own way of doing it that makes you stand out and stand apart.

A wild also will work within your environment.

Now the next point I have for you, or I shouldn't say a point, but within the point too, the next thing under leaders who don't evolve that can become obsolete is the world is changing way too fast for you to rely on a ten year old playbook.

Oh man, I'm telling you, this speaks right here.

The world of business is evolving way too fast for you to continue to rely on a ten year old playbook.

That doesn't mean you need to throw the whole thing away.

But oftentimes what's in that playbook may not be valid for today.

I'll give you an example.

Sometimes when I'm helping organizations and they're building things like websites, sometimes I'll look at their systems and their processes and when I look at what's in their website, in their website they have something that even though they've refreshed their website and I felt impressed to say this, so I'm going to help someone who's out there.

If you have a business and you have a website, just so you know, websites should be refreshed about every two to three years at max.

And what I mean is that if you have a website that you've built, obviously you need to change the content on there and roll it out so it turns around and it stays fresh.

But about every two to every three years you should really refresh that whole website because that's the best practice for business.

Now I just threw that out there as a golden nugget for someone because I felt impressed in the spirit someone needed that.

You get that one for free, actually getting all this for free.

But anyways, you know what I mean?

All that being said though, those 10 year old playbooks, you know, sometimes I see people in their businesses and they've gone through the reiterations of refreshing their websites or building new websites.

But sometimes I see something on their website and I was like, hey, what about this link?

What does this do?

Or when you click on this link and takes you to this section, what about this?

Why do you do that?

And they're like, oh, we've just.

That's Something we just always done.

And I'm like, okay, well, you know, I believe personally, within business and life, but especially business, that anything worth doing, you should be able to measure it.

I've taught that to my teams for years.

In fact, I will tell you that I've shifted entire cultures of organizations by first starting from me outward with my people, and then as they cross pollinate into other meetings and talk with other people across the organization, whether they realize where that's coming from or not.

All of a sudden, I'm in a meeting one day and I hear from someone saying, you know, anything that we're doing, we should be able to measure it.

And I'm like, wow, what a profound thought.

Anyways.

But you know what?

I never step up and say, that was mine.

That was me, I said that.

No.

Why?

Because true leadership, when you say something and it's of worth value and you know, it may take time to come back and echo to you, but when it comes back and echoes to you as someone else's idea, when, yet you know where that started, that's true cultural adaptation.

I'm going to say that again.

That's true cultural adaptation.

In other words, you have shifted the culture of that environment with your leadership when it's presented back to you as a genuine thought by someone else.

Now, I'm not saying that others can't have the same thoughts and same things, but when it comes back to you, like word for word, you know where that thing came from and those moments, you don't say, that was me.

I need credit.

No, you just.

Your job just became a hundred times easier because now you've got the other side of the company thinking the same way you do.

But going back to my point, whatever is worth doing in an organization should also be able to be measured.

And if you're not sure how to measure something, then you need to figure that out.

Sometimes you measure it through a KPI, other times it's through an okr.

There's all different types of measuring systems out there, but you've got to figure out a way of how do we measure this?

How do we measure the success of this thing?

Sometimes you have metrics like roi, which is a real common one, you know, your return on investment.

But very few people look at tco, total cost of ownership.

You know, one of the things I tell people, and we absolutely have a podcast coming up on this, and it's the difference between sustaining something and maintain.

I'm sorry, let me.

I said that incorrectly.

It's the difference between Obtaining something and sustaining something.

You know, the effort in business it takes to obtain something, that's one thing, but the effort it takes to sustain and maintain it after you've obtained it, whole different conversation.

And if you got to do things like actually add FTEs or things of that nature now, man, all of a sudden, you might have cost yourself right out of business without even realizing it.

And I mean cost, but I'm talking about pricing yourself right out of business.

You know, there's cost that we associate things, and then there's what we refer to as real identified cost.

Or another way of saying it.

A better way is realized cost.

There's cost, and then there's realized cost.

What does that mean?

The cost of what you think it's going to cost you, but the realized cost is what did it really cost you.

In other words, sometimes people measure things just by how much they had to shell out, how many checks they had, right, Just to buy the thing, but they're not including.

How many labor hours did I have to put in that?

How many.

How many project hours had to go into that?

How much of my staff did have to pay for that all at the same time, by us doing that project?

What did I have to put down?

What had.

Did I have to sacrifice?

And as you start adding up those numbers, those things start quantifying pretty quick.

And now all of a sudden, those are your realized costs.

Now, I'm going to pull back a little bit because I'm concerned that I'm getting ready to go real deep on a deep dive, and I just don't want to do that.

But that being said, if that became a little technical for you, apologize, but just stay with me and just mark it as Neil actually knows his stuff.

All of the Lord, none of me.

Praise God.

The next thing I have for you is underneath the point, too, that leaders who don't evolve can become obsolete.

This is important.

Create a challenge culture.

Oh, do we have a special guest?

We have a special guest in the audience today.

We have little Livy.

Come here, mamas.

This is my dog.

I told you guys before that I sometimes have my dogs in the studio with me.

Sometimes it's Ollie, sometimes it's Livy.

She may pop up.

She decided to lay by my chair, so sorry about that.

But that being said, create a challenge culture.

What do I mean by that?

This is where you create a challenge culture.

Where, in other words, it's safe but also encouraged to ask questions.

That's just the simple thing about it.

It's a challenge Culture, it doesn't mean challenge my authority.

That's not what I'm talking about.

If you do that, that's a slippery slope.

I'm talking about when you create a culture where it's okay to challenge things.

Not challenge people, not challenge authority, but challenge systems, challenge ways of doing business, challenge whether if it's still needed, challenge whether if that's the right thing to do for you.

You know, sometimes in organizations, you'll see people sit around a table and they'll get super creative, especially in creative strategy meetings.

And, man, you start with 10 people in the room and you start with person one and go all the way around the table.

And by the time you get to person 10, you had 10 different ideas pop up of things that you absolutely should be doing.

Well, someone has to be the voice of reason in that room where they say, hey, we started off as an organization doing this because we said this is what's going to make us successful.

But now we've changed that 10 times.

Which one of those are we going to do?

Or are we just going to stay doing what we're supposed to do?

And sometimes it's as simple as that.

Now, it's not wrong to have those creative sessions.

In fact, I'm going to tell you, it's extremely beneficial.

However, if you chase every new thing, you'll start 100 things and finish nothing.

It's better for you to have one, two, or even three initiatives at the most that you see to completion before you pick up the next, rather than you start a hundred things, but they're only all just 3 to 5% complete.

That will tear a business apart, and it tears apart a culture as well.

Well, that being said, make it to where it's safe to have a challenge culture, where people can ask in a safe environment questions, or where they can challenge things.

In fact, you should even encourage it.

I've taught you in previous podcasts that one of the strongest things you can do as a leader is to ask for feedback.

This is part of that.

Understand that innovation always starts with the question.

However, it can also die in silence.

I'm going to say that again.

Innovation always starts with the question.

Someone's questioning something internally or externally, but they're questioning something.

And as you question this thing and you bring it and give it a voice, whether if it's an external voice or you simply give it a voice by going and creating that thing that answer to that question.

Understand, though, that while innovation always starts with a question, innovation also dies with silence.

In other words, if you don't bring that thing to life in your actions, if you don't bring that thing to life with your voice, that innovation can also die.

So here's what I want to do, and we're going to finish today's podcast with this.

I want to challenge you with something.

I'm going to put my coach's hat on for a minute.

Actually, I never take it off.

But anyways, I've got my coach's hat on and my coach's cape.

My super cape.

No, I'm just joking.

But anyways, here's what I want to question you today or ask you a question.

You've heard me teach about the ham hock story.

You've heard me share about some of my experiences with it.

What's a ham hock in your life today?

I know that speaks.

What are the ham hocks that you have laying around you in your personal life and your personal development, your personal growth?

But what about in other things like your leadership or within your business?

Maybe, you know, you're an entrepreneur and you have your own business that you own and you have processes and systems and employees.

What ham hocks do you have in there?

Or maybe for you, you're not the entrepreneur, but you're the intrapreneur.

What is that?

That's someone who has an entrepreneurial type mindset, but rather than starting something for themselves, they're actually called to help build someone else's vision or dream.

We all need those people.

Those are great people to have.

We all need those people.

But maybe you're building a culture for someone else or something else, another organization.

What are the ham hocks that you have laying around?

What are the things that you need to challenge?

In other words, what are the things that you're constantly repeating without knowing why?

I'm going to say that again.

What are the things you're constantly repeating without knowing why?

Guys, that being said, I'm going to go ahead and close today's podcast.

But before we sign off with you, I want to remind and encourage you to go by our website@neil Reyes.com where you can find all of our teaching resources.

In addition to that, I want to remind you that I believe in you.

I think this is so important to hear and I hope it sounds genuine when I say it or feels genuine, because it is.

I believe in you.

I know that many of you who listen to this podcast or watch this podcast that we've never met or at least haven't met yet.

But many of you, I have been blessed to meet.

But whether I know you or whether I don't, I do know the things that make you tick.

Because I know that by you staying plugged into this podcast and following it and subscribing to it and listening to it and sharing it and all those things, it's because it resonates with you.

Somewhere in here, your heart, it resonates with you.

In other words, it's pulling on your heartstrings, it's tugging on you.

It resonates with you.

It excites you.

It lights you up, like with lightning or fire on the inside.

Because you're passionate about these same things.

You're passionate about your development.

And I believe that you have talents and abilities in you that you're aware of and new things that you haven't even begun to unlock.

But because you've connected with the podcast like this and you have someone who believes in you, you give that thing time and consistency with your growth and you continuing to work on your advanced mindset with Neil and the executive perspective, and I believe the best for you is yet to come.

You have new heights you haven't explored yet.

You have.

You're moving forward and upward because you're a leader at heart and you're a leader in your mind.

I believe in you so much in your abilities, and I am looking so forward to hearing from you and seeing the great things that you're going to go out and do.

So, guys, I believe in you and I'm encouraging you to go out and smash it and connect with your best life and your best performance.

Thank you so much and have a blessed day.