Podcast

In our latest podcast, Solspace founder Mitchell Kimbrough welcomes back Leslie Camacho, an EOS Implementer who helps creative agencies and professional service firms scale. Together, they explore the key traits, humility, discipline, resilience, and a blue-collar work ethic, that build lasting client partnerships.

They discuss why open communication is the glue that binds relationships, how ambition and accountability drive growth, and why a touch of vulnerability can make all the difference. If you’re looking to build client relationships that stand the test of time, this episode is for you.

Full Transcript

[Music] Welcome to the Solspace Podcast. Thanks for listening.

Mitchell: Hi everybody, welcome back to the Solspace Podcast. This is Mitchell Kimbrough, founder of Solspace and your podcast host. I've invited Leslie Camacho back on the podcast.

If you guys have by any weird chance listened to this thing over the number of years I've had it, you'll know that this is Leslie's third time back. Why is that? He's one of my best friends, certainly one of my best business colleagues of many years.

There wouldn't be a career for me without Leslie. So Leslie, welcome to the podcast. Hope I didn't embarrass you just now.

Leslie: No, you did not. I will take all of that and it's right back at you. I would not be where I'm at without you either.

We were instrumental in helping each other get started. It kind of blows my mind that 20 plus years later, I think at this point, it feels amazing to have such instrumental and awesome people for that length of time. So it's a privilege.

I don't take it for granted.

Mitchell: For the young folks out there getting started hearing this, think about it. These are real relationships. These are real friendships that also have a business component.

I mean, that's not the purpose of you and I being friends, but there is that connection. I've prospered because of the relationship, but it was not a means to an end. It's interesting to think about that.

It's not our topic for today. So who the hell is Leslie Camacho? So Leslie, you are an EOS implementer and you are our implementer for Solspace as well as a number of other digital agency clients.

I believe that's sort of the boutique space that you're occupying in the EOS world. And you're just building on your knowledge as a purveyor of things digital for the entirety of your career. Before we get into the topic, maybe you say a couple of words about your practice area.

Who you focus on who you help most.

Leslie: So yeah, I love working with professional service firms, creative agencies. I've been doing this long enough that there's been different fads about what to call what we do. So I guess agency is kind of frowned upon by in some, so sometimes it's firm, but really marketing firms, branding, UX design, software payment gateways.

Basically, if you are building complex stuff with any sort of skill and expertise on behalf of somebody else, that's the type of company I really love helping and getting involved with. And I've been part of agency land now for almost 30 years, 25, 30 years, depending on when I start counting. This year I'm taking a, I'm still keeping that focus, but I've added two other specializations to also help agencies.

So I do something called Outgrow, which is a revenue growth program specifically for B2B. And I do EOS and Outgrow in the service of helping owners grow intentionally and exit successfully. The older I get, you and I were talking before the podcast, I'm going to be 50 this year.

And so a lot of the clients that I've had over the last three years have had, how do I exit this? So I got certified exit planning and I don't sell exit planning services, but I really wanted to understand that landscape, the mindset and how I can be helpful so that when agencies are looking to sell long-term and getting their agency in a sellable state, that I can use EOS to really help with that process. I've had a couple of clients that came to me specifically for that and I knew nothing about it.

So I really wanted to educate myself and be able to do those things because it's essentially building the value of the business and whatever the owner wants to do with the business, I want to be in a position where I can help.

Mitchell: Alright. Today's topic is we were talking about this question of how is it that some, I'd say maybe 70% of clients of Solspace over the years are long-term, like they're multiple year, every week, every month, every quarter clients. Why is that?

And what are those qualities that they have or what qualities are they looking for in a provider like we are that creates that longevity because we want more of that. Those are really pleasurable business relationships. We're family with a lot of these clients.

We know them for so many years and we know when they have kids and all this sort of stuff. If you got to make a living somehow, that's a good way to do it, to have real relationships with the people you do business with. How do we get more of those?

What are they like? What are the traits that we can be looking for? Part of that conversation was thinking about the handful of clients that we have meeting that description who are also EOS companies.

The entrepreneurial operating system, which is what you're an implementer for. Then I started thinking the kinds of people drawn to the long-term relationship with Solspace, they have a certain set of things in common that is a pretty Venn diagram matchup with people who adopt EOS and really engage with it. I thought, wait a minute, what if Leslie and I talk about what those common traits are?

I thought that might be interesting. Maybe some of those people out there listening would identify themselves and say, yeah, alright, that sounds like me. What is this EOS thing?

What is this Solspace thing? Maybe I should learn more. That's basically the running concept.

In my pitch to you in the email, inviting you to do another podcast with me, I said, let's talk about what those traits are. For me, I thought they were in this simple list. Humility is one.

Resilience is another. Communication is another trait or priority. Discipline, responsibility, ambition.

There's a couple of others that may come up as we talk, but those are the ones that I sent you initially that made you say, oh, yeah, I'd be willing to talk about that. Before we hit record on this, one of the things you really dived into was the discipline word and what that meant to you and your clients and why that matters. I probably have some things to say about that too.

I wonder if we could start by talking about the discipline component of this question.

Leslie: One of the things about discipline in particular is that usually the founder of the company has had discipline in some area that has allowed them to get as far as they can. They usually have some expertise plus a discipline and they may not be disciplined in all aspects of their life. In fact, usually they're not.

It's not like a lot of clients come to me and they're super organized and they do everything and they're super regimented. That does happen, but usually there's this one thing that they have gotten excessively good at and they are disciplined about doing that in the service of others or in the service of making a product. And that discipline has taken them a long, long way.

And when they start hiring, so they go from an hourly rate, maybe they quit their day job and they started the thing and then they get far enough where they can hire a couple employees. What will often happen is that they will hire people like them that will also have a similar discipline, whether it's in the exact same skill set or a skill set to the left or right. And so you will have like three or four really strong individual disciplined people and that will get the company even further.

And so whether that takes them past a million dollars or 3 million or 5, there's a certain runway that they can go and then they will hit a ceiling where the individual discipline doesn't allow the company to scale anymore. And they have to figure out how to be disciplined as a team. And one of the reasons that it is really challenging early on is because they only understand discipline within the area that they're specialized in.

So if an owner has to hire marketing or sales or finance or some area where they don't have any deep knowledge, they don't understand the expertise and they don't know what discipline looks like that, they can hit a ceiling and get really stuck. And so it's one of those things where a work ethic got them to a certain place and now that work ethic won't get them to where they want to go next. So they oftentimes ask, how do I translate this individual discipline into a team-based discipline?

Or how do I understand discipline in a different area of expertise that I don't have any direct knowledge of? And so a lot of that issue comes early on, but they really value that discipline because they understand that it's literally made them and other people a lot of money or provide a lot of value. So that's my first pass take on why discipline is critical to that list.

Mitchell: When I bring up discipline, I'm thinking about one client in particular who is a runner. So she's a marathon runner. And when I say discipline, I'm thinking about people who acknowledge the concept of discipline as an abstraction, but then also they see the value, they see that there are outcomes that you get from being disciplined, and then they apply that in their work life.

And they get frustrated when they don't see the same types of people as counterparts. If they're going to pay an attorney to do a thing, if they are themselves disciplined, they expect discipline. We'll have clients come to us who say, look, I just cannot seem to get this web developer to write the code that will not crash when they launch it.

And they can't seem to change anything on the website without making a ripple effect of problems. What's going on? The answer is discipline.

That developer they've hired, it lacks discipline. They lack the ability to get in with a process that they've defined and worked up over time. Discipline is boring.

Leslie: Yes, it can be. That's true.

Mitchell: Discipline is plotting.

One of the things EOS has you focus on is, look, you got to do the same thing. You got to make the same widget over and over and over again. Which one are you making?

Will you tune that over time? But you got to make it, you got to get boring or you're never going to make any money. So there's a sense in which discipline, those people who do not have a disciplined life, they make fun of it.

That's not cool, man. You're not cool. What are you going to do?

50 pushups every morning at 7:05? That's not cool, bro. Discipline is boring, but the outcome, which is what we're all seeking of discipline is powerful.

So when I think about discipline, I think in that term and I think of the best clients, the most successful clients who are successful as marketing directors or what have you, they are people who acknowledge that discipline is a superpower and you should cultivate it.

Leslie: Yep.

Mitchell: And we get along really well with them because we're a disciplined team and we come to them with the answers, with the things we promised last Tuesday.

It's Thursday. Here are the things I promised you. We have discipline, we executed, right?

So that's how I read that one. We're a little bit different on that one, but also quite similar, I suppose.

Leslie: Yeah. I think like in reading this list, I think it's really, I love how in this particular list, and I realize if you're listening in audio, you can't see it. So discipline is in the center and to the left is communication and to the right is responsibility.

And I think that going back to that individual level, those two things to the left and right of discipline are really key. We're talking in a business context mostly. So if I have a level of discipline and you have a level of discipline, but we don't have good communication about what that means to both of us, like what those expectations.

So at the leadership level, a lot of it has to do with, I can't just assume that how I interpret this, that even if we're both using the word, I'm disciplined, you're disciplined, I still have to set clear expectations and I still have to clearly communicate that. And that has to be a two-way communication part. And then responsibility is, I think it's related, but separate.

So in this context, and I realize that I'm riffing. And so my answer next week might vary, in this context, I think that discipline is more of a responsibility to self. Like use the pushups, right?

So if I'm working out and I have something in mind and I can get up at 7:05 and do my 50 pushups, but that's not the same thing as being responsible. Responsible, I think in a business context, am I responsible in the service of others? So can I use my discipline to be responsible, to keep my commitments?

And then do I have, can I engage in a level of communication that ties it all together? Where I do the work, I'm doing the right work and I'm delivering it at the right time and the communication supports that effort. And so the more people you add into a team and the more complex thing that you make, the more all three of those are required.

And it's got to be at an individual level, but also at a team level for really to all kind of work in concert together.

Mitchell: I feel pretty confident that I can draw a straight line from communication to making money. I think you can turn good communication into money, especially in a business context. I mean, for many, many years at Solspace, one of the priorities of how we do business is to be what we call high touch.

We try to over-communicate. Go away. That's enough.

I understand. Okay, get it. I'd rather hear that than have someone come to me and say, I haven't heard from the project lead in a couple of weeks.

Is that thing on track? It's totally on track. Everything's fine.

Yeah, but nobody said anything. I didn't know what was happening. When you can turn communication into money is when you can be effective interpersonally so somebody can feel safe to be vulnerable to say, I don't know how we're going to do this.

I didn't want to say it to anybody, but I don't know how we're going to get people to come to this page and then convert and buy the thing. I don't know how we're going to do that. You get good communication when you cultivate those human relationships.

People can feel vulnerable, open, and safe. We acknowledge that communication can be sloppy. You kind of don't hit it right ever.

That's a humility required. We'll get to humility in a minute. Well, say more about this communication thing.

I think in our sessions for EOS with you, it was always a subtext at a minimum. Often it was specifically called out as something that needed work. What about communication?

Leslie: With communication over the last six months, it's been an area of focus, particularly for me in a sales context. When we talk about turning good communication into value and then building relationships. We opened this podcast, we've been friends for 20 years and helped each other.

We actually don't communicate that often in terms of frequency, but when we communicate, man, it's all in. It's all in and it's deep. We've increased the frequency.

I think there's different ways to interpret communication, but real authentic communication, and that can just be, hey, we're ready to have the meeting. It doesn't have to be like a complex topic. But the thing that I'm really understanding at deeper and deeper levels is that communication is just a way of saying, I care.

I'm here to help. You hired me to help. I'm making sure I'm helpful.

Is there any other way you need help? What do you need and when? And here's what I have.

Here's what I'm going to deliver it. And so, I love the over-communication aspect of it, especially if you're in the service business. I think it's important for product as well, but service, we are selling the relationship and the thing that we're doing.

And so, going back to one of your opening questions about why do clients stick with us? You can have super disciplined people that you never, ever want to talk to. Oftentimes, the top performers are the worst communicators and they can actually destroy value quickly because they can destroy relationships, even though the work product is excellent.

You just don't want to work with them. And so, the communication is, can I show up? Can I be helpful?

And as long as you have that, I was talking to another client this morning named Bryan Cush. He's the owner of an amazing shop called Tidal. And he was talking to me like, yeah, he has a mentor from a group he's part of that talks about this assume positive intent.

And so, that was a good lesson to be relearned is that in our communication, we assume positive intent, we set those expectations, but that strong communication is just building a relationship, just showing I care. And then to your point, the honesty to say, I'm going to fall short and I wanted you to know as soon as possible and here's my plan to make it right. That is a much better conversation than on the day of the meeting, hey, Mitchell, I promise this and I'm sorry.

And then you're like, Leslie, when did you know you were going to fall short? Two weeks ago. But I didn't have the courage to call you. I thought maybe I can make it up.

I knew I wasn't going to. But why didn't you just tell me? We could have done something else. It still would have been bad, but that lack of communication just exponentially made it worse.

So, whether it's good news or bad news.

Mitchell: You can't communicate if you're not self-aware. You just touched on something like if you don't, and this is consistent across all of our multi-year best clients is these people are self-aware. They are cultivating a self and it matters to them who they are and they get in touch with their fears and their strengths and their weaknesses.

And that translates into their communication ability too. Just last week, one of my longest standing clients, the leadership level wanted to have a meeting because they're planning this big new thing that they want to do on the web. It took a few minutes, but they finally opened up and said, they're just terrified to do it.

Why are you terrified? Well, because the last time we tried, it nuked the relationship we had with the developer at the time. Why was that?

Because it was so technically difficult. So they opened up and they expressed their anxieties and fears. Now I know what to do.

Now I know how to serve this client. Now I know how to communicate and reach them so that we can get the work done without anybody tripping over fear, anxiety, or any of that sort of stuff. So this communication self-awareness is really powerful.

Leslie: I think in an EOS context, I would consider it a cornerstone of team health. If you can't communicate, you're never actually going to be healthy. Even if you think you are, you're probably not.

Mitchell: Yeah. So what about humility? Humility ties into this.

Leslie: I actually love that this is first on the list, especially in the context of what is it about engaging in EOS as a initial shared trait, kind of like thinking, sparking this conversation. Because in EOS specifically, when we are looking for clients, when we're out there looking for prospects, one of the things we actively ask is, are you open, honest, and vulnerable? And is the status quo no longer working?

And as implementers, one of the core values that we have to live, we're required to live them, and we get interviewed for it, is that we have to be humbly confident. And we want clients the same, where I can come to you and say, I know I'm good at what I do, but I also have the humility that I need help. And so one of the early tests in the sales process that I look for is, in that no money has exchanged hands, we're still in the sales, are we a good fit, et cetera, is in the first 15, 20 minutes of the call, will a client actually have the humility to say what's right, what's going right, what's going wrong, what are the things keeping me up at night, what am I worried about, to someone that they may not know at all. Even if I've had a good introduction, I don't know this person, and now they're sharing their revenue, they're sharing their challenges. And so I know that if that starts happening in the first half hour of a conversation, there's a good chance I can be helpful.

It doesn't mean I'm the best fit for them yet, but as an opening indicator, it is so good because it really means that they are open, honest, willing to learn and have that posture of, we need help. And then I want to also hear the other side of it. We know we want to be great, we're great at these things, but we don't know everything.

And so there's kind of like an always be learning mentality that comes with humility. And so if you think of every implementer doing a version of that pass with their EOS clients, then when EOS clients meet each other, even if humility is not a core value for that client, they all started their journey because they needed help and were willing to go get it. And I think that becomes more so than anything else on the list, that's probably a connecting factor across all EOS clients.

And that includes those that are self-implementing because they're asking the same question. We need help. We want to grow.

We're not working with a professional, but we're reading this book, talking to each other and actively trying to improve because we know we need help and we think this knowledge will be helpful to us. So I think humility might actually be one of those foundational aspects that when EOS clients get together, even if they don't know each other, you're dealing with people that needed help, realized they needed help, got into critical situations or had ambitious plans and went to go look to get that help in some way, shape or fashion. And if you weren't like going back to what you said earlier, if we don't have that self-awareness of where we need help, we're going to get stagnant somewhere.

We're going to get stuck somewhere. So I love humility as kind of an opening thing because that posture in life is really important. You can be humble and confident at the same time.

They're not opposed.

Mitchell: One of our EOS core values at Solspace is great today, better tomorrow. And it really is about humility fundamentally. The idea is that you know how to walk that tight rope of being confident in your abilities, knowing that you know that you can find the answer.

You don't necessarily know the answer immediately, but you can find it or you have a process where you can extract it from a situation. But tomorrow you may be even better. You should be even better.

And you're not punishing yourself and saying, ah, you should have been better. No, that's not the point. The point is humility.

The point is I'm really, really good at this, but tomorrow I'm going to learn something that's going to make me better. And so today I'm going to make sure I don't walk around with a chip on my shoulder. We get the best results with our clients when both parties feel this way, when both parties are like, I'm really good at this, but there's probably more I could learn.

So let's explore together and figure it out and let's try the thing, launch it, and then be humble about it. Maybe we could have done it better, but we got it up and live and now let's go back and revisit it.

Leslie: Yeah, a hundred percent agree with that. Humility is not the act of making yourself small. It's realizing that any work that we do, you're standing on the shoulders of somebody else and there's always someone ahead of you and there's always someone behind you and you can both give help and receive help.

Like what's coming to mind is it's a really important posture that leads to curiosity. And when you can be curious about someone else or a problem like that lets you dive in. That can just be so rewarding across so many levels.

But if you dive in with, oh, I know the answer for sure. And there are occasions where that's true depending, but if you're like trying to solve complex problems for people and go in with like a know-it-all attitude versus, oh man, this is going to be exciting to figure out and know where you have the confidence and where you don't and having that back and forth with the client, that can be a really powerful conversation.

Mitchell: What about resilience?

Leslie: I don't know any companies that last longer than three years that don't have resilience at a very deep level. Like going back to the concept of discipline, there's a direct relationship between resilience and discipline. If you have discipline in some area in your life, you also have cultivated that discipline through resilience, whether you're calling it that or not.

And I think especially like going like where my brain wants to tie these together, especially if you have humility and discipline and resilience, you can really do anything or you can at least make a valiant attempt. So I'm not a runner, but if I have discipline and the humility to say I'm not a runner. So like when I start this new thing, I know I'm not going to be perfect at it.

So I'm going to have the humility that I'm going to be really bad at this early on. And so I'm going to learn a little bit about it, but the discipline is going to actually make me run because I can learn a lot. But until I'm actually running, I'm not really getting the benefits of running.

And then I'm going to get sore. Maybe I get injured. And then that resilience combined with the disciplines, okay, I'm going to heal up.

Try again. Let's try something else. Let's go to the left or right at that.

And so like you combine these traits together and you really begin to understand again, what you said earlier, the self-knowledge, the self-awareness of when to apply what I think becomes really powerful. And certainly from an entrepreneurial mindset, like the resilience is heavy. And if you're a services firm, it's a rollercoaster.

Now EOS doesn't get you off the rollercoaster of markets of anything else. There's always going to be a rollercoaster, but maybe we can make it more fun or like a better experience. But that ability to be resilient for an entrepreneur is so critical because you're going to fail a lot.

And then you have to figure out a way to get back up and keep going.

Mitchell: So many of our clients are marketing directors or the ones who make first contact with us are marketing directors. We'll meet more of the team after that, but that's the lead. These people, none of them survives without resilience.

Not only as something that comes to them a little bit innately, but something that they've also cultivated personally. First of all, in a lot of the businesses of the size that we work with, the marketer's by themselves, they're solo. There's just that one marketing director holding all of that stuff up.

And in marketing, you're wrong most of the time until that one thing, that one formula works. And you repeat that and bring in some business. And then it fails.

It's not good anymore. Now you need to be resilient and go again. The nature of that work requires resilience.

And the nature of the kinds of organizations that our people, again, the size client that we at Solspace tend to work with, they're kind of by themselves in there and they're getting slapped around by the executive team and by the IT group and by everybody. There's a resilience that is just, it's got to be there or they wash out.

Leslie: And I like that you use marketing as an example there. And I would definitely include sales. And that's often why a good marketing person, like going back to this idea of communication, right?

And what does discipline actually mean? Especially if your discipline is driven by being very results-oriented. So like when I'm coaching people through growth, like why is it so hard to reach out to someone in person, make that phone call or whatever that outreach may look like.

Part of it is because if it's the owner of the business and the sales seat, for example, like we've talked about many times, I'm an owner in the sales seat too, that requires us to. And if the thing that we're disciplined or expert at is requires a high level of effectiveness, right? So when Solspace talks about making websites reliable, so like reliability has an uptime factor to it.

So when we think about like service agreements for the website and you are the one engineering that and the leader of the organization, like what is a good uptime for our website? 99.999, like it's got to be as close as possible to a hundred percent. And then you have to take that mindset, that got to be top level mindset, right?

And you apply it to growth and you think about, Oh, alright. In my body and brain and mindset, I have to build reliable applications for people that have a 99 plus success rate. And now for an hour a day, I'm going to try to get into a mindset where if I close 10% of my sales, I am a top performing salesperson.

But you have to switch from this a hundred percent mentality to a 90% failure rate and trying to make that mindset switch is like really challenging. And so that goes back to, but when you're still growing your business, when whatever, wherever you are, like, I'm not talking about number of years, but whatever stage you are in your business, if you're still engaged in the growth process and your software, marketing, or design agency or something where that like the execution has to be close to perfection, and then you try to do growth of any kind and that failure rate so high, like of course, there's that disconnect. And that goes back to, that's where that resilience has to be there. You have to be able to switch that, get that resilience, even if you don't feel like it.

So that's why I think all entrepreneurs have that resilience factor to varying degrees. But if you don't have it, you're going to be out of business because you have to do something to deliver best in class service or product whatever. And then you have to switch into a mindset where I'm going to fail 99% of the time or 90% of the time.

And it can just be soul destroying to try to go between those. So if you don't have that resilience, it's very difficult to be successful.

Mitchell: I can vouch for that.

Leslie: Yeah.

Mitchell: Soul destroying part. What about ambition? Are these clients that we work with, are they ambitious?

And what does that have to do with anything?

Leslie: So this is one of those things where early on in my consulting career, and especially in my EOS career is that I did not understand how critical this component actually was to the type of clients that I really enjoy working with, because I would interpret this as more of a VC mindset. You got to try to do a thousand extra business and get to $2 billion. So I had a very Silicon Valley interpretation of ambition.

And there is nothing inherently wrong with that, but it was too binary thinking on my part. So if it wasn't that, and that was my only interpretation of ambition. But what I quickly came to understand, and especially three years in, have become much more mature about, is that ambition is having a clear idea of where you are now and where you want to be three years from now.

And it was really reading a lot of Dan Sullivan, who I have mixed feelings about, but he says he really knows how to get the mind going with some of his writing. I've read this book called How the Best Get Better, which is one of his oldest books. It's only 30 pages.

And if you are an entrepreneur, you should read it. And in there he talks about, I think he calls it the R factor. Are they a future focused person?

So if you don't know where you're going, it is very hard to get there. And so there's like a cliche, like if you don't know where you're going, anywhere will do. So businesses fall into that trap where whether the owner checks out or they get burned out, or they knew how to get to a certain point, but not sure what's next for them.

And I think a lot of agencies are in that spot right now with like, how is AI affecting our business? All shifts in the industry, like the world feels like it's shifting in a lot of places. So the owners that have a clear idea of where they want to go, or at least willing to make a bet.

They, I don't know if this is right, but we're going this way until we figure out something else. So I see that as part of ambition is instead of just trying to cling to the status quo, they're actively trying to grow the business. And I think where that makes a real difference is that when you get protective of what you do, you start losing that curiosity that lets you know what's next, where do I need to improve versus what do I need to protect?

And they're really two different mindsets. And the protective mindset does play like an important role, but if it's only protection, if you don't have that, man, I want to grow this way, I want to accomplish this thing. Then there's nothing to really rally behind.

And it doesn't necessarily have to be a revenue target impact you want to make in the world, et cetera. But if you don't have that clear direction, then the communication gets harder. If the communication gets harder, you become less disciplined.

If you become less disciplined, the responsibility falls off. Then the resilience starts going away. So it really leads to stagnation if you don't know where you want to go.

And ambition is key in driving the work that clear ambition requires. Ambition without clarity is problematic, but if you can use that ambition to get more and more clear about what you want to accomplish with the business, then it makes everything better, even if it makes it more challenging at the same time. And even if it introduces risk. I don't know if that tracks.

Mitchell: Well, it's like the fuel that's propelling all of this. And I'm trying to think of a formulation of ambition that is compatible with the comparison you made between the Silicon Valley bro culture version, hustle culture version of it, and what we actually see day to day. I wonder if I can? Fill in the blank.

That's a formulation that works. That matches up with clients that we work with, with the people on my team. I wonder if I can..I wonder if I can do this faster.

I wonder if I can make this handle more traffic. I wonder if I can make this all show up above the fold. I wonder if I can grow the business and get more of this kind of client.

For me, that's what ambition means. I wonder if I can? You want to get up in the morning and you answer the question of, I wonder if I can add another 200 onto my swim workout and do it in the same amount of time or whatever. I wonder if I can is my definition of what ambition means.

And it dovetails cleanly with all these other traits. You're going to lean on resilience in order to give free reign to ambition. You're going to be humble.

Otherwise, your ambition is intolerable. You're just an exhausting person. So all these kind of fit cleanly together.

Leslie: What I wanted to "yes, and" to where you're going with that is, if you think about Solspace clients, there's a big difference when a client, if I come to you and say, Leslie, why do you want to hire Solspace? Well, I'm just tired of my website breaking. It makes me, I don't know, a million dollars a year, and it just breaks a lot.

And I'm tired of it breaking. And I just want my million dollars a year. On the one hand, of course, maybe you want the work and that's a worthwhile goal in a lot of ways, but that's a very different client that says, Hey, my million dollar website keeps breaking.

And that's a problem because I want it to be $10 million because what I'm doing with this, this tech stack is X, Y, and Z. And it's going to have this impact. And I want it to do this thing.

And my team is a specialist in this and they can see here now, can Solspace help me get there? You start by fixing what's broken. But what I want is to go there, help me go there.

How do we get there? I don't know. That's why I'm hiring you.

Very different clients. One's ambitious. One just wants the million dollars.

And in terms of what engages your brain to say, Oh man, do I want to spend my time helping this or that? And usually the ambition client, as long as those ambitions line up with our values and what we want to put out into the world, that can be like magic when you find that client that is ambitious in the same direction.

Mitchell: There's a word not in this list, but one that you brought to the attention of Solspace during our EOS process with you. And I think about it on a regular basis. Now you called us blue-collar and I want to bring an additional word in here as part of the discussion.

All of my contracts, anytime I give a master service agreement to a client or I receive theirs and I get their legal team's language, all of them contain the word workmanlike. Now it's a gendered word, but putting that aside for the moment, workmanlike, blue-collar. You're going to trust me to write the best quality code I can, and I'm not going to cut corners.

I'm going to make sure that all the seals are in place on the plumbing under your sink, because you don't want to have to go in there and verify my work. That's why you hired an expert because I'm the plumber and I'm supposed to be blue-collar and workmanlike and get it done right. So why did you, first of all, why did you use that word to describe my team and what does that word mean?

Why is that something you find to be in common with your clients?

Leslie: I think a lot of it comes from being involved in early content management systems. And even so more than that, just the early days of the internet and the mid to late nineties and early two thousands. And I don't know if I read this from someone else or if it's an idea I had.

I don't know if there's, I don't know where to give credit, but I've had a decades-long belief that those of us that work on the internet in some capacity is that we're the next generation of auto mechanics. There's a work ethic that comes with doing thankless grunt work where it's things inevitably be reached this complexity that we don't always associate with blue-collar. But I think it's very much part of it where like you think of the other words, resilience, discipline, humility, communication.

So you think of like the people that make roads or workers on a construction site, the level of deep expertise they have is often severely underestimated unless you're actually working in that field. Because what we see from the outside is like you use a plumber, right? What we see from the outside is tightening the right things, getting the water flowing, maybe cleaning out the toilet.

So from our unskilled view into what they do, it looks like nothing. They just happen to have a plumbing snake so they can do that. And they have a bigger, fancier wrench.

But behind what they're doing is 20 years of experience with deep knowledge. And like I was talking to a plumber once, right? And it's like, well, how did you know this?

That's like, well, this sink is this and this is here. And that means the water pressure is here. So your water take is probably that.

And I know the city's water pressure is this. Those probably mismatch. You probably have a crack somewhere that's like 20 feet down from here.

And that's outside on your sidewalk. And that's going to be really expensive. So I'm trying to check it here so we don't have to dig in here.

I'm like, holy crap. I just saw a guy with a wrench.

Mitchell: Yeah.

Leslie: And so, but he didn't learn. I'm sure there was book learning involved in that, but it's a combination of the knowledge. And then he's just done that for 20 years and all of the expertise that comes from actually doing the work.

So like, if you get a computer programmer with a computer science degree, they may be really great, but you put that someone next to someone who's been actually programming the thing for 20 years and there's a massive difference, especially like, and those programmers will look different if you're doing client work versus SaaS work versus this. And that knowledge gap is more of a wisdom gap than anything else. So I think of blue-collar as being full of wisdom, got that work ethic that you've earned it with your hands in some way, shape or form.

And usually it requires collaboration of some part when we think of a workmanlike ethic, but it also means you're going to get the job done. And so it ties back into the other words, a good blue-collar worker, they're reliable, they get the job done. There's going to be grunt work.

It's going to be thankless to a large extent. In my work with agencies, regardless of the capacity over the years, so much of the agencies that are successful have that blue-collar ethic, regardless, because most agencies aren't started by people with MBAs. They start out as a discipline to do something really well and then expand on that.

And to me, that feels like people who work in the internet keep the world moving just like auto mechanics in that sense. And this is meant to give a lot of respect to mechanics in particular to make this association. It's not downgrading the technical expertise, but rather it's acknowledging the vast amount of knowledge and expertise that we, especially like growing up in our age, an auto mechanic now may have a PhD when you think about the complexity of cars versus 30 years ago.

So yeah, that's why I think blue-collar is so important. It means you've actually done the work. You have the experience of doing the work and you have the knowledge as well as that combination.

Mitchell: It's been fortunately very rare over the 25 years that we've been in business where we had to end a client relationship. And I'm thinking of one that we had to do that with about three years ago. And I'm looking back on it after what you just said, and I'm realizing the reason why that had to come to an end, why I had to cancel that contract, was the executive-level leadership at that company didn't have an appreciation for this blue-collar workmanlike value.

And it all came to a head when we were building up a new feature for the website in service of a big product launch and big marketing push. And this whole thing was going to be contingent on basically the core of this e-commerce system. And there had been so much hurry up, hurry up, hurry up over the years.

We just want to beat the deadline, just meet the deadline, do whatever you have to do behind the scenes. We don't care what it looks like. They just had spaghetti, they had garbage code.

And it was brittle and frail. This idea of blue-collar, to me, it means nobody's ever going to see it. It doesn't matter if it's good quality.

It doesn't matter if I do it well. The blue-collar mentality, the workmanlike sort of philosophy says, I don't care if anybody ever sees this site, it needs to be excellent because that's how I'm going to be able to sleep at night. So we lost this client because they had with previous developers pressured them to not do blue-collar workmanlike work.

The consequence came to a head on my watch. Now, all of a sudden, we're trying to launch something on a deadline that's high complexity. A lot of money is going to flow through this system.

And we're looking at this thing like, this is not going to hold up under pressure. We have to go back and refactor this and fix this. When?

Right now. It cannot wait. And they didn't want to pay for that.

They didn't want to take the time. And they didn't want to take ownership and responsibility for what they had done. I don't know if white-collar is the word to use, but just kind of shortcutting and cheating the fundamental plumbing up their digital infrastructure.

And that had to come to an end. That was expensive and painful. And I lost a lot of sleep, but the bottom line was we're blue-collar and they're not.

We cared that the underlying thing was reliable and steady so that the outward thing that they're depending on to make money is reliable and steady.

Leslie: I think to give them probably way too benefit of the doubt, the kindest way I would interpret that is they're just naive because they haven't done the work. So they don't know what they're talking about and they don't respect the workmanlike ethic.

Mitchell: There's onus on me for not educating the client effectively. I mean, you can't see everything. You can't see the future perfectly.

And if I look back on it and think, what could I have done differently? I would have done what the good contractors who've come to my house to do work have done, the good plumbers, the good electricians, where they come and they say, here's why this happened. And they trace backward all the causes of why this weird power outlet failed or short-circuited.

It's because of this, this, this, this, this. And they can explain and they see the future because of their expertise and they can help explain to me why it matters. I didn't do that.

I didn't see the future as clearly as the 50-year-old version of me versus the 40-year-old version of me might have or what have you.

Leslie: Yeah. And now we're right back to communication, making money.

Mitchell: Right back to communication. Yeah. So that's why that fits in now. That's why we say we're high touch because if we fail on any of these others at any given time, communication can catch it, show it to you and help you acknowledge that you need to go back and fix.

So in my list, what did I miss?

Leslie: I think the one last one that I want to pull out that is one of the notes that you sent me is we don't believe in excuses. There are reasons why you can't keep a promise sometimes, but reasons are very different from excuses. And that concept, I think that there is a next level to that where you bring compassion into that mix, but we don't confuse compassion with letting someone off the hook where it's especially maybe less so with clients, but more in like, how do we become great bosses and managers?

It's giving the space for the people that report to us to make those mistakes, be honest, explain those things. Why couldn't I get this done? Explain it much like you were talking about that great communication, but then still say, oh, thank you so much.

You're going to do so great next time, but it's a C this report for you because you didn't get it done. But you just said you were so compassionate. You were so, it was like, yeah, yeah, I'm compassionate, but I also want you to learn.

I'm still going to hold that line and accountability, but the way that I'm interacting with you when I hold this line, treat you like a human being that deserves respect. I know you can do better next time. So I'm going to hold this line with you as an invitation to rise to it like I know you can.

Because often compassion is used as a way where we, as a manager or boss, we talk ourselves out of holding that line. Well, I want to be compassionate with this person, so I'm going to give them a pass even though they didn't pass. And the deeper and deeper I get into EOS and leadership and what actually make companies run, it's that I'm going to, Leslie, you missed the mark this quarter.

Tell me why. And I'm open and honest with you. I show humility.

It's like, that's great reasons. What's your plan to do better next time? It's this, this. Great.

How can I help that? Great. I can do that for you.

I know you've got this. Great job. And then when I give you that feedback, but it's still a C for you this quarter.

We needed this done. It didn't get done. I understand, but we had to hire someone in.

I want you to understand that because this didn't happen for whatever reason, like we lost profit, whatever. And there's a way to have that conversation where you are just an asshole. And there's a way to have that conversation where I'm being invited up to a new level of achievement that I can do because you see the value and you see that I'm being honest and you see that I've got that potential.

And so you're holding that line, but you're also inviting me to really rise above where I think I can be at. And so that line there, I think is like, that's the foundation of that. But then how you actually enact that, the way you communicate that, that can be a big difference in whether companies actually grow or not.

Because in one, I'm afraid of you because you yelled at me for not meeting the deadline. And the other, I'm inspired by you and I want to do right by you, myself and the company next time. And from an accountability standpoint, both people have done the exact same thing.

But if you're fear-based in how you do that, you lose, you're going to lose that communication. The communication is going to drop quickly. So how you invite someone to rise to that, it can also be make or break.

And that's the one I wanted to point out. The way you hold someone accountable, the way that you communicate, the way you value the team health, but still hold that line and accountability is a critical factor on whether the company grows or not.

Mitchell: So many parallels here between this and parenting.

Leslie: Yes, there are.

Mitchell: I got a couple of teenage daughters.

It's just too much sometimes for them to take the trash out. I'm sorry, I had to finish my homework. I couldn't do it.

It's one of your chores. You're getting paid to do this. What's happening?

Part of me wants to just let it slide, but that's not compassionate. I'm preparing them to get yelled at by some dude at a warehouse where that's their first job and they don't do the thing and they're like, oh, I just felt too lazy to do it today. Oh, you what?

How about you're fired? That's me not preparing them is not compassionate. And this matches up with how we are as leaders in a business and how I should have been with that client that had to come to an end.

If I was compassionate with their future self and my own, I would have said, look, you guys have been sloppy. You have a culture of slop for years and you got to clean it up or you're going to pay for it. Either you're going to pay me to fix it or you're going to pay for somebody else or you're going to lose a lot of money one day.

And that would be the compassionate thing to do. And that's a level of development of the soul that I'm seeking and striving for. I don't know, I'm not there yet.

You can ask my teenage daughters who still haven't taken the trash out.

Leslie: I might've been involved in a similar thought process discussion just last night. Yeah, I hear that.

Mitchell: Well, sir, I think we covered a lot of good ground here.

Leslie: We did. We did. Yeah.

And like going back to blue-collar, the reason this conversation is how it is, this is, we've been through this. I've made all these mistakes and had to learn and grow for them as well. And I think that's what's, that's what's so great about the friendship.

And you take this posture with all your podcast guests. I, I just love it.

Mitchell: Well, thanks for coming on Leslie and thanks for expanding my mind and soul and wellbeing.

Leslie: You're very welcome. Same to you, sir.

Mitchell: All right. We'll talk to you soon.

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