The First 17 Years: You reveal what you know by the questions you ask

Tiffany Sauder: When you decide to do something big or feel called to do something big, there's an expense that you don't understand that other people have to pay to. 

Guests: She didn't know what it was yet, but she was really trying to build something meaningful. She just always had these big ideas. There was no fear, no hesitation at all. It was like, this is my moment and I'm gonna take it. I don't know how long it can stay this bad, but it can't really get worse. 

Tiffany Sauder: These people, these voices, these experiences, they were my mentors. They are the people who help build and refine and grow me into the leader that I have the opportunity to sort of be Today.

This is the first 17 years, chapter seven. Brian Kavicky is steady and unrelenting. He's a partner at Lushin, and I first met him because he was doing a lot of sales training at the time. All 

Brian Kavicky: the stuff that. people deal with in their business is just life stuff. You get in, you have conflict with an employee, well, you have conflict with a kid.

You have issues where you don't know what to do. You have issues where you don't know what to do. And as a parent, it ends up all being the same thing. And there's not this line between work and life that people think is there. So, To me, it's just organic. 

Tiffany Sauder: I can't tell the story of my own growth without talking about the role Brian has played in my life.

I can't tell the story of our growth as a business and our, the competency that we have in our ability to generate revenue is completely what he's taught us. And I think that it, it like helped me understand how to do business the right. Like sales has this like really crummy reputation and it was like he lives a like do right?

Always and like give first. Like that's his own ethos. And I think that like I wanted to believe that's how it could go. And I think Brian lived that. So crisply in front of me that it gave me like courage that that could happen that way for us. And I think just like a perpetual, abundant mindset, like when you're around that it like rubs off on you in a really good way and.

I think in ways I don't even understand colored the way that I see and understand business. There were times that I paid Brian a lot of money and there were times that I paid Brian $0 and he took my call at the exact same speed and like, I don't know that there's a lot of people that are like Bill. 

Brian Kavicky: So the year that I didn't meet Tiffany was in 2008 ish.

And I've been looking for a marketing company for our company cuz we'd never done any. The branding was like 1980. Logo was terrible cuz my father-in-law had his brother do everything. So I went looking and I went. By recommendation of a peer to Element three, because you said Tiffany did our website, she's really great.

It'll be awesome. And so I went to Element three and they said, well, Tiffany's out on maternity leave and. You're gonna have to meet with this other person, and it was the worst meeting that I ever had. I left there going, that was weird. I don't know what they do. I don't even know how they built a website, but I'm outta here.

So fast forward to 2011. We had this thing in our office called Pink Sheets and Pink Sheets. Papers of leads that had gone to know, and it was a stack about six inches high, and they handed it to me on my very first day and they said, Call these people. They all said, no, you might as well start with that.

So I went through it and I'm sorting and I'm cold calling all these people. And Tiffany's sheet came up and I looked at it and I went, huh? They were a no. Well, they clearly could use this. And I set it aside. And it just sat on my desk. It wasn't in the pile. And I just went, I gotta call her, I gotta call her, I gotta call her.

And I postponed it. Like I can't call her. I don't know what I'd say. And so, so I finally got up the courage to call cuz it, it didn't feel cold to me. And instead of my normal cold call, I said, I was in your office a few years ago. You were out on maternity leave. I told the story and I said, based on that experience, I'm pretty sure you need my help.

I'd like to tell you what happened and even if I can't help you, at least you learn and adjust. And she said this was a very different cold call. And I said, is that good or bad, ? And she said, well, no, this is great. I'd love to know that. I'd love to make an appointment with you. And that's how we met is in that very first meeting.

The 

Tiffany Sauder: first time I ever heard like Brian's voice was through a voicemail on my phone, and it said it was like, Tiffany, this is Brian. Call me back at three one seven. You know, 5, 5, 5, 1, 2, 1, 2, whatever his number is, and. It was like said in a way that had urgency and so I actually thought it was a collections call.

So I called him back and was like, uh, this is Tiffany. I guess like Brian needs me. So that was how, I mean, it wasn't like an introduction in the traditional sense. It was him cold calling me and leaving it in such a format where I thought I'd done something wrong. And I mean, it was like a season where I owed like a lot of people money elementary.

So that was why it was top of mind for me that this might be a collections call. So I called him back and was like, uh, this is Tiffany. I guess Brian wants me kinda like, who's Brian? And that was how we met. I rolled 

Brian Kavicky: up to the pyramids parking lot. I parked my car about 45 minutes before the appointment.

I got out my journal and I started writing about what the meeting was going to be today. It's December 14th, so this is right before Christmas. Today, I will connect with Tiffany. I do not have to work to make that connection. God will open her heart to listen to my words the way that I am and will encourage her that I'm someone who can be trusted.

Someone that can help her more than she already is. I will bond early. I will become unemotional. I will get to next steps. I will find the true pain that she needs help with and help me to show that I can help her, give me the wisdom to know that she deserves my help. I love what I'm doing and I will be able to help.

At that point, it wasn't like she was my first client, so I knew what that looked like. I knew and had faith that I could do it. I just perceived. Her situation is very different cuz one of the things that she had said to me on the phone was, I'm, I'm pregnant again. And that was a tough time in my life and I was like, oh, this isn't totally just a how do you sell better?

This is a business conversation of where I'm at. And so you're showing up for something very different than what I had been used to. Up to that point. There's something I'm supposed to do. 

Tiffany Sauder: I remember going into it our first meeting, like just feeling really guarded. I remember going in just feeling like I'm gonna hold my cards really close to my chest and I'm not gonna tell you things, and even if I wanted to work with you, I don't have any money, and so it doesn't matter.

This is mostly a waste of my time with how I went into the conversation. So the whole environment of it was so much different than I was expecting. I mean, he is a sales trainer, so I was expecting it to. Very salesy, like, uh, and my stereotype for that was like kind of pushy, not a good listener. Focused on like the transaction, not on the person.

Those were like the stereotypes I had about it. And I remember him just like sitting there like he does just like with this like posture of no expectation. Like his shoulders are like kind of s slumpy and he's like just relaxed. He just looks at you like, Hey, and I can't handle silence, and he probably already knew that, and so I just like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and started like talking and he's very comfortable with silence.

Somewhere along the way, he moved the questioning, like the subject of the conversation from the business to me personally, and I was pregnant. With my second daughter at the time, and I remember being like six months pregnant, like kind of beginning to think about planning for some semblance of a maternity leave, cuz that had been very disrupted with Aubrey with the oh 8 0 9 recession and a month after she was born, I had to let 50% of the company go.

That was with my first one. So I was in a very trauma filled way trying to think about planning for. I was gonna have a baby. I didn't know if I was gonna get a maternity leave, but there was a lot of emotion around that for me. But I didn't have the luxury of emotions and so I was just behaving it. And he pushed enough where he was like, well, how does that feel?

And what about like that? And talked to me about it, and I think I started bawling. But he said, you believe that when you have babies, bad things happen. I remember those words so vividly. And. I had never thought that, but in him being able to reflect in a very short time to me that this is your muscle memory is that when you have babies, it's horrible for you.

I was like, yeah, that's true. And I felt seen in a way that as a young entrepreneur, it's very lonely. You don't know that you feel that lonely because. You can't admit it to yourself or you die, but he just saw me so quickly and was able to articulate the depth of what I was going through in a way that I couldn't see it or articulate it.

I told him probably most of the truth about where we were as a business, kind of like, you like to fix broken things. Like how about this broke ass thing? You know, Like, it was kind of my attitude like, okay, Mr. Incredible. You know, was like, how about this? Huh? And I think I was like, it doesn't matter if you could help me because I can't afford it.

It was like my response. And he's like, it doesn't matter, whatever you need. And we started working together from there. And he basically told me, it doesn't have to be the case. It doesn't have to be the case that when you have babies, bad things happen. And I was like, kind of like prove. And he was like, if you will do what I say, we can make that.

Brian Kavicky: Well, at first it was the, the problem that was in front of us, which was, I'm scared to have a baby cuz I'm gonna leave my business and the last next time I leave my business is gonna be like the last time and I'm gonna lose a lot of money and it's all gonna fail. It was like, no, it doesn't have to be like that.

We can set you up for more success than what you had right now or what you're used to. And it was giving her the confidence to get through that. And then after that, it's, well, how do you make things happen versus relying on. Things to happen for you and how do you create opportunity and how do you keep customers and how do you build teams and all that stuff.

But initially it was, I'm gonna lose my business when I got on maternity leave, should I even do this? It wasn't about a business problem, it was about fear and confidence problem. So in this journal, what I actually journaled every day was a prayer that was, bring me people that need help, help me decide who deserves it, and so that that fits that mold and I haven't changed that.

That's still my perspective. I don't care what their problem is. I just go, oh, you need help here. 

Tiffany Sauder: I also always believed that Brian saw something special in me, and I like needed to feel that somebody believed in me in that way because it was such an unlikely story that any of this was gonna be successful.

I like needed to know I wasn't crazy to like keep trying because it took a lot of swings. And I've said this before that like I think there was somewhere along the line where like in my head he almost turned into my big brother, like where if somebody needed to throw a punch, , because I needed to be defended.

So to speak that I just knew he would stand in line and do that for me. And I think part of me needed to be like, woo. I'm like really feeling exposed out here as a young leader with these kids and trying to figure all this out. And I'm not from the city and I don't have like the safety net of. A bunch of country club relationships or my parents or something.

I don't know. I'm just like going and I, I just needed to feel like somebody had my back and even if I screwed it up super big time, that he would help me untie the knot. And I've always walked a really. important line of like never doing it for me and never like making it easy, like just serving up the next ball I needed to hit.

And there were times I would be like, I can't, like I need you to just tell me the recipe cuz my, I can't, I don't know the answers to any of your questions. I just need to be a, a robot for a minute. Just go tell me what to do and I'll go do it. And then I'll be back and then we'll do it again. And I just like needed.

That confidence. Um, and I just felt like when I would leave their offices, it would be like, go get 'em. You're gonna be fine, . I was like, okay, here I go. . I remember asking for that first $25,000 month retainer and you were like, First of all, just practice it in the mirror. And second of all, that's like 6 cents to them, you know, relative to like how they, because I was thinking about it like my money or like our company at that size.

And I was like, I could never, I couldn't imagine it. So then just bringing context was so important cuz all I knew was what I knew. And I needed somebody who, who believed in. 

Brian Kavicky: Most businesses view sales as their most in front of them problem. And the one thing that they can point to and say it's a problem.

I don't have enough revenue coming in. I'm, I can't keep clients. I don't have enough new business. It's very easy to go. That's it. So most people start there cuz it's easy to see most of. We do, and I do goes a lot further than that, but that's not what they see when they start. I would not take a client at all if all they have is a sales problem.

Cuz I can see in those first conversations that. There's a lot of other things going on, but one of the rules we have is you, you can't outrun someone's belief system and so when they believe it's a sales problem, you kind of just roll with it, cuz it is, it's just not all the problem, it's just the first signs of the problem.

One of the things that came up in our conversation is I asked her what she wanted the business to be doing and where she thought she needed to to be. And she said, well, I wanna sell a million dollars in a year. And I said, oh, it's easy. You'll get there in a year. And she looked at me and she said, what?

How do you just Cavalier say that I can do that? And I said, because I see the path and you don't. And I have that perspective. And she was like, she was, Ugh, I just don't know how it's that easy. And I said, look, here's the thing you told me. Here's this, here's this. Don't you see the path? And she thought about it and she goes, well, it can't be that simple.

I'm like, yeah, it can be, it doesn't mean it's easy, but it is pretty clear. In 

Tiffany Sauder: those seasons look like one of two environments. I was the president, c e o in our office, and so every conference room I walked into, every time I got off the elevator, every time I was in the kitchen, it was my job to be like, Hey, how's everybody doing?

What's going on? How did that client meeting go? Like, that's so great. Yeah, let me coach that. Yep, I'll get that back to you. Let me respond. Yeah, no prob like I was just pouring myself out and then in the client stuff it was the same. Gotta be on. Let's present this thing. Are we ready? Is the technology queued up?

Uh, no problem. Client just asked us a horribly hard question, my job to feel it, and it was like I could never just rest and understand. What do I think? What do I feel? What do I believe? Where am I growing and where am I going? And those types of questions. I would drive over to the Lushin Offices for sales training and that felt like a very safe place for me cuz there was like nobody who needed me, I was just a student.

And then we would do one-on-one coaching, I don't know, like once a month or something like that. And his office became a place where I could just let my guard down. And in those coaching sessions, sometimes I would just not be okay. And he was able to, Kind of like shine a light for me to walk through the just like really dark parts of the tunnel after going through almost losing the business, it became really a very dangerous thing for me internally to like actually believe it could become anything because the like disappointment of it not getting to where I saw was like something I couldn't.

Like couldn't make myself vulnerable to for some reason. I mean, even if you would have gone and looked at our offices and the pyramids, we moved into those like six months before, you know, everything fell apart. There was never anything on the walls up until the day we left cuz it became this thing that like putting something on the wall.

Is admitting we're gonna stay here. And it was like, we might not. And it was like always like this sense of like, in a minute I can pack my bags and leave. It's fine. Like I, it took me a long time to like dare to believe it was going to survive and I behaved it in like the off chance we were gonna make it.

But my heart. Just like I think couldn't absorb the like size of sadness that it would be if I like really believed it and then lost it. 

Brian Kavicky: The first challenge was getting her to understand that the things that had happened in her business had nothing to do with. Her pregnancy, they had to do with how she had structured things, what was missing from how she operated, where she left it.

When she took time off where she was gonna get it back. She hadn't made the space to. Actually exit properly. She didn't set up new clients and then get 'em rolling and then say, well, I'll be back in a couple months. She was just stopping and starting, and her people were flailing. So we looked through what were the failures, what did people not know what to do, what were the things that were missing?

We put all that structure in place so that everybody had a purpose. Everybody knew what they were doing, and it became a non event. Because her people knew what their responsibility was. Then after that, it was shoring up the customer relationships so that the customers never really looked at it as, well, you weren't there, so we left.

It was getting her confident that she had set up the customers properly so that she didn't have that fear that they were gonna leave while she was gone. That was first priority. There was one instance where I remember her standing up in my office and kind of pushing her hands down in this postured position and she said, will you just tell me what to do?

Cause if I knew what to do, I'd already be doing it. And I was like, okay, here's what you do. There was no, and and that's actually where I learned that not everybody wants to self-discover. Some people just need direction. Some people need to discover it on their own. And she was definitely a tell me what to do and I'll knock it off the list.

Tiffany Sauder: And like the classic line that he'll repeat that I said very early in our relationship was, if I knew what to do, I'd already be doing it. Like I don't know what to do. I know that, but I don't know what to do differently. And so I'm just doing the thing that I can see. And if you know how to help me, I will do it because I know I'm not doing it right or I would be getting the right results.

So I like gave myself over to him when it came to like, Just remap my brain fast and I just didn't question it. I just did it. You know, it becomes a real habit to be paranoid and scared. It's a sense of like, I don't know, just like being on the edge. And I remember talking to Brian when he was like, you know, what are your goals?

I'm like, well, what are goals? Like you're just gonna randomly pick a number and randomly pick a date and you're just like gonna get there. Like I was just supposed to became cynical about the whole thing, and he was like, You might not get there, but you're definitely not going to, if you don't pick somewhere and start to like organize.

I think it's learning, you know, when you don't know anything and you're putting blind effort, you're expecting there to be an appropriate like outcome that bounces back. So, you know, like, you know, going into oh 8, 0 9, I was putting in a million pounds of effort and I was. No, like positive return from that.

And so I think having to learn that it's not just the effort that matters, it's the right kind of effort, and knowing how to be able to like learn and adjust. I just didn't know that and I think I was just pissed that I'd done all this work and I'd given up, I said given up, I'd made a lot of personal sacrifices.

Kinda like for what? Like it was just a big pile. And I was mad and I was. And I didn't know how to do it differently. 

Brian Kavicky: Things that people do with good intentions, when they're overdone, they tend to do in the wrong direction. So Tiffany is very wired that way. If, if I know what to do, I'm gonna do it so, There's good, here are the things you need to do, and the bad is, oh, I just read a book.

It says I'm supposed to do this, so I'm gonna do it. And some of those even have to get undone. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. That's not the whole story. That's what a book said. What's the real problem? There has to be some processing, but I think she still operates that way. Just tell 

Tiffany Sauder: me what to do. There were two things I would say, two categories of things Brian asked me to go do.

One was just like different behavior. My immediate problem I was trying to solve was getting more confidence in revenue. So having a predictable pipeline. So it was like literally hitting a behavioral scorecard. This is how many cold calls you're gonna make. This is how many meetings are gonna have with new relationships every week.

This is how many like pieces of content you're gonna publish. This is like behavioral scorecard of this is actually what's gonna occupy your time. So that was the first thing, and in that season it was very helpful for somebody to just tell me what to do. I was like, perfect, . I don't know. So that was the first thing.

And then the second was like the content of the conversations I was having. So we had some good clients and some bad clients, and so we wanted the good clients to get better. And I wanted to replace the bad clients with good ones. So it was role-playing some of those conversations about how do we get back control of the relationship?

How do we get back to our expertise? How do I get more comfortable stepping into conflict with clients and see that as a productive part of getting to the right answer instead of like something I avoid at all costs, cuz I want them to like me. And so it was just getting comfortable with different words.

It was getting comfortable with silence. It was getting comfortable with not answering every question with a statement, but like maybe with another question and getting past some of the like obvious things that people say so that I could get more deeply to, like, why does this really matter? And why would they spend their time with me and why would they spend their money with me?

And, and like just honestly being curious instead. Thinking I have to sell something. And I think it's funny because I think today a lot of people would say, one of my talents is asking really good questions. And it's like Brian teaching me, you just have to release the outcome. You're not trying to make a sale happen.

You are going to make one if it's the right thing to solve their problem. And you're not going to make one if your, if your solution is not the right thing for their problem. And when you honestly go into that conversation with an honest pursuit of the right answer for them, you show up in a totally different way.

And it was a completely foreign concept to me. and it was a much more natural way to behave. So I think I globbed onto it really quickly cause I was like, oh, this is what my brain wants to do. Anyway, I just thought that that was wrong and it just gave me permission to be really curious and to be present.

I think one of the most extreme things Brian ever told me to do was to stop preparing. He literally was like, stop. I don't want you to read their website. I don't want you to go, I just want you to stop preparing. And he had to kind of create that extreme test case for me to show me that my preparation was blocking my ability to hear actually what was happening like at the table in the meeting, whatever it was.

And when I went in kind of without any armor of knowledge, I had to actually listen. And it was like a trap he set for me so that I could experience. What feels like a free fall when you go into a meeting and have no intellectual context to fall back on. It's like, feels like the professional equivalent of skydiving, but it helped me trust my ability to solve in the moment when I'm given new information and.

You know, those are those moments where it's like just trusting him. Like, what do you mean? Like you're crazy. And just being like, well, I guess I'll try it. Like I don't even have the capacity to fight you on it. I'll just try it. And I would just go do that stuff. And I think I, I kind of got addicted to the experimentation of it, and it helped me learn really fast.

Brian Kavicky: There was a shift in the marketing environment where marketers felt like they had to prove themselves and prove their worth by showing ROI to what they were doing. Early on, it was very low hanging fruit. She jumped on it quick and made it happen and got traction because she was an early adopter and got a ton of success that way.

She grew accounts, she got new accounts. She was seeing an expert in that space. That was a huge positive. There were a customers that she'd always had where she had untapped potential. She didn't know how to untap. She had been relying on someone to be strategic for her, and when she stepped into that space of, I'm gonna be strategic now and I'm gonna be the person, and she showed up as a business mind, not a marketing mind, a lot of things started to happen positive.

Her selling got stronger. I remember having a client of ours meet with her, and he called me after the meeting and he said, does she actually know what she's doing? And I said, yeah. He goes, well, I signed up, like I'm, I signed a contract with her, but I don't even know what I'm doing. I don't even know what this is, which is pretty good because.

That's high confidence in her ability and you can actually help. So that was a big change. Another exciting change is when she started to realize that. The way that she was doing things and the way that she was building her plans allowed her to forecast and hit all of her, forecast, all of her goals every single year.

That was an exciting shift because she didn't have fear around, what if I fall short? She, she knew how to build a plan. She knew how to execute. She knew how to get there. Had some pretty exponential growth in those years. Another big. And good shift is the switch in mindset between what success looks like.

There was a phase of success that said, I have to have a lot of people working for me, but that eroded profit, that eroded quality, that eroded all these things because she grew at such a rapid rate that she couldn't maintain control of it and realizing, Scaling back was a better thing, which caused them to have increased revenue.

Most people don't do that, they just ride it out. So those were the big ones. 

Tiffany Sauder: I joke, I play life like a game of bumper cars. I just can't see the warning signs. I just, I'm too, I don't know what I'm too much of what, but I'm just too much. Too much. So yeah, I mean we had like a decade of just like up into the.

And lots of affirmations that we were doing the right thing, but my leader. It was still all about me in a lot of ways. I mean, I was really proud of the team and I knew that they were a piece of it for sure. But on the inside, I mean, I, I really saw it as an extension of my leadership and what I'd built and what I'd fought for, and, and that started to hit its ceiling as well.

And so in 2018, We lost a gigantic client. Our culture just started fragmenting and good people started leaving. You know, that was the season when Kyler came to me and said like, I'm out. Like I just can't be part of this. And I think that's where I started to see like I just have to make room in a different way to trust people with really big pieces of this thing.

Because I am at my max and I was at my max. I mean, I was. I mean, I was working just a gajillion hours. I would like, you know, be on vacation watching a movie and all my brain was doing was like thinking about a client strategy or like, it was just like so consuming. It was not sustainable for sure. That was when my marriage started falling apart.

That was where it was like everything I'd worked so hard for, I was there and it sucked. And it was like, well, I guess this is the end and a lot more fanfare, , like, you know, like there's a lot of fireworks going off, but it's not necessarily a celebration of a win. It's like the celebration of an end. And, and so that was where I was like, I just, I have to learn different behaviors.

I have to be more collaborative in the way. I am working, I have to have room for people's ideas and leadership and partnership in a way that I just didn't know how to, and that was when we started e o s. And that was a big part of, you know, me getting really clear about like, this is what my sandbox is of contribution and this is what other people's sandbox of contribution is.

And getting just a lot more. Clear and organized and trusting people with bigger pieces of it. You know, now, like we're actually like an orchestra that plays like where everybody's got an instrument and the song sounds good. And I was like the conductor and the music writer and playing every instrument, or at least I was trying to play first chair, you know, like in every section.

And I have to imagine that that's like kind of what it felt. But I didn't see it in myself. I thought I was doing the right thing, but like things started to break. 

Brian Kavicky: I think you had the. The typical struggles were relationship struggles, kids struggles, uh, life management struggles that most everybody has, key employees that.

She thought were loyal, questioning her people, that she believed in not doing the right things. A personal Tiffany shift was she went through this phase where she almost became narcissistic, where I'm the reason everything happens. I'm the reason for our success. I'm the reason that we're amazing and it.

It was weird to watch cuz that wasn't how she really was, but she was showing up in a way. So all the people that were close to her were kind of like, ah, I don't know if I could work around this. I got, I'm gonna leave it, I'm gonna quit. And she had some key people who were like, Hey, unless this changes, I'm out.

Which woke her up cuz she didn't see that that was happening. She recognized. I called it out over and over. Those people came to me and said, this is a problem. I pointed it out. But when things are going really well and you are an ingredient in that success, it's hard not to take credit for some of it.

And it's hard to give other people credit when you know you're a key piece. She's just taken it pretty far. She fixed it real quick and I think she went from, oh my gosh, this is a problem to, I'm not gonna be like that really quick. And it happened when her key people had basically come to her and said, You're not the Tiffany that I know.

You're not the Tiffany that I want to be around and I'm going to start looking for another place to be. And that shock of the closest, most valuable and most loyal people telling her, I think I'm out. Was a big deal and it happened at stages. You know the first stage was, oh, that's okay. I could do without 'em.

Cuz she was still in that zone to, wait a second, this is happening over and over and they're all saying the same thing to me. I have to address this. And she sort of snapped out of it. 

Tiffany Sauder: I think that like any. Taken to an extreme becomes like kryptonite. It becomes a liability. And I think when I, we were going from the stretch, like coming out of oh 8, 0 9 and 2011 was when I met Brian.

That's when I had her second daughter. And it was sort of like this beginning of a rebirth, my fight to win and my desire to know whether or not I was good enough to win. Was like totally what drove me. And it was about figuring out could I win in a bigger pond? Could I beat competitors who had been in the industry longer than me?

Could I, as an outsider in the city be successful? Could I solve problems for big brands in our backyard? Could I compete for talent? Like, could I, could I, and. That grit to win, it was like win or die kind of an energy from me. It served me well in those seasons where like the lights were really dim and there was nobody who was going to like bring energy to the party and I had to figure out like how to get the ball rolling.

I think as we started to really hit our stride and like have a bunch of years that were up until the right and our team grew to over 70 people. You know, we were in the newspaper every week and like all this kind of stuff started to happen. It was still about me and I was seeing that as a manifestation of, of my talents on display.

And you know, the validation that I was looking for of like, am I good leader? Can I compete and can I crush everybody else who's around us? Which is really what I wanted to do. I had this dream once that I was crossing the finish. And there was like, like some race that I had run , and there was like this huge, you know, finish line ribbon and there was this huge like rainbow arch situation with like balloons, all this confetti in the air and everybody was cheering.

And I was like, yes, I've done it. And I turned around and there was nobody behind me. Like I was all alone. And you listen to this series long enough and know that like, Soul's desire is to bring people along with me. And I just realized like I'm running at a finish line and all these faceless people are gonna be excited for me, but there's nobody like with me.

And that was really when I decided I would rather not cross and have people behind me and like with. Then cross the finish line. And that was like when I was like, I just don't, I don't care the same way in a healthy way. I'll get there if I get there, but I'm not gonna do it if it means I have to leave people behind.

Brian Kavicky: I was exposed to a concept recently where were, it was framed a lot differently, but the concept. Is around where courage comes from and what happens is we see an opportunity in front of us and we realize, We don't know what to do with that opportunity. We don't know where to take it. We don't know how to address it, and that's where the scared comes in.

Right after that phase of scared is you're switching to confidence because you have to develop your competency towards that area that you were scared of first. So when. Scared Confident. That is the literal first stage of developing competency. But it happens almost at the same time as immediate switch, and I think that people that recognize.

The fear handle it in two different ways. They either say, I'm afraid so I'm gonna avoid that, cuz I see that the opportunity might not be worth overcoming. The fear and the confidence, which is the other way that somebody handles it, is I'm acknowledging that I'm afraid, but I'm confident enough to start working towards something even though I may not know how or what I get.

It's that same time point in a timeline. To me, that's what it's about. 

Tiffany Sauder: I would be like, oh my word, I've got this huge deal we're working on. He'd be like, there are no big deals. There are just deals. Like, don't psych your brain up to be such a crazy person. He wouldn't say that, but that's what he would mean.

Like there's no big deals. There's just deals. Just principally do the things that you know are right and then outcomes are what they are. Don't try to contrive the world to be a thing. It like is what it is and trust it and believe it. And so I don't know. You know, I've asked Brian before, like, do you ever get nervous?

Like, do you ever like just. What a pier pants, . And he's like, yeah, I get nervous sometimes. It's like his reaction, you know, it's like, no, you don't. No you don't . But if you do, you just act the same. And I think there's like this measuredness about him that like somehow drives right between the word scared, confident, like he's never confident and he's never scared.

You know what I mean? Like drives between the words. And so I think there's a piece of the way we work together where he would just. Don't believe the hype and don't put yourself in the ditch. Just be, and outcomes are what they are. 

Brian Kavicky: The people that lean into the fear have leaned into it often and know that that is a sign of good things to come.

The people that avoid it have learned to lean away from it often, and they say, well, that's okay. I'm not afraid. But they don't advance in any skill development or ability to handle tougher situations. 

Tiffany Sauder: I used to believe like sales were random. I used to believe that if you had told me hitting a quota consistently seven years in a row was possible, I would be like, sure it is.

I just didn't believe that you could get that predictable of outcomes. I believed that to be in the service business, you were gonna basically have to be on call like 24 hours a day, like whenever your clients need to do. I believed that you revealed what you knew by what you said, and I now know like that's, you really reveal what you know by the questions you ask.

I used to hate silence. I would say I still struggle with it, but I better understand the value of sometimes just waiting for people to just keep talking. I would say I used to over-index on my intuition, like I'll know the answer, which I still think I have a lot of intuition, but I feel like Brian's helped me channel that more 

Brian Kavicky: so in the future, and probably to a degree right now when things go well.

You tend as a, an entrepreneur to figure out what problem you're solving or what you're doing. Some entrepreneurs deal with that by creating problems in their business so that they have something to solve. Some people get distracted with doing other things and taking things in another direction, and she's, she's in that stage of business where, You have to keep paying attention to the core of what got you to where you are.

You can do other things, but you can't turn away from the core. The core is what fueled everything. The core is where you built everything. The core can't go away, no matter what you do. So right now she's figuring out, you know, what am I supposed to do here? What's my role? What's my long-term plan? Whereas my attention need to be, and she's feeling out different things to see where she's going to be.

The blind spot is, well, what's wrong with where you are and what's wrong with the core, and what are you doing to take it to the next level? And focusing on that. And when you've had great success, you don't look at what's ultimate success. You've been so incremental over time that you don't think, how do I take it to the next level?

And that's a danger zone. When you develop your people as part of the culture, you develop and you develop 'em well. You develop rock stars. Well, if you. Caring and feeding your rock stars. Your rock stars. Figure out what they want to do. And if you don't have a path for them, they figure out somewhere else to do it.

And so even though she's dealing with the challenges of what's next for me and what am I doing, having the perspective that everybody else is in the same spot, and what's my path and what am I doing and is there a benefit? Long term for me to continue to do this as people continue to get better, that's a massive risk, especially when you've built your business correctly on 

Tiffany Sauder: people.

I would say that now we have command of our ship. We know what direction we're going. We know the, like people, it's takes to keep them like speed in the water. We know, um, what to do when we take on water. And things get hard. We know how many miles per hour we can go and what it takes to like refuel, like we just have command of the ship.

Does that mean we know everything? No, but we know a lot and we have incredible dashboards. We've got just incredible like visibility into what's happening. . And so there's just more confidence and in that comes more competence in our ability to like make decisions, put people on the right problems, solve things in the right order.

Keep people engaged, create an environment where people can see where we're winning. So it's just like we still have to be really, really good at our jobs. We are really, really good at our jobs, but there's just so much less left to chance and like lightning striking. Right? And there's a lot more that's like programmatic and this is the way we run it.

These are our very boring daily behavior. This is what it looks like. This is how it fits together. And there's just a much more like consistent drum beat of this is what we do every day, whether the sun is shining or it's raining, or we're taking on water, or the dock is dry. It's always the same. Next time, on the first 17 years.

So I see her as probably one of the most amazing ladies I've ever met in business for the simple fact that to be able to start a business and grow it from the ground up the way she's done it. Chapter eight, Mike Kelleher. You know, she started it from scratch. She didn't acquire it from anyone. She learned from individuals in our business community how to do it, and she just jumped feet first into it and built and developed people around her to grow it.

And that's very similar to what I did with Royal United and businesses I've worked with in the past. And I just appreciate people who can grow things from nothing, start something that didn't exist and help it grow and thrive. I hope each of these conversations are a reminder to stop and thank the mentors in your own life.

The people who have helped us each unpack life and just live the journey much more fully. If you want more of this content, please subscribe to scared, confident. Please, please and share it with a friend. And if you want more sort of inside track, follow along on Instagram. We share a lot there. Thanks for listening.

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