📖 To access Travis' complete book list, visit his storehere
Speaker 1:
This is Unleashing Leadership, and I'm your host, travis Moss, with our season five co-host, dave Nurchi, and this podcast is all about inspirational books that we read, and each season is about a different book. This season happens to be about the Hard Thing, about Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz. But we don't just go over the book like a book report. We actually talk about the takeaways and how we've experienced those in our own professional lives Things that we've implemented, things that we haven't, but our thoughts on it or things that we're doing in real time to give you a little bit more perspective. Maybe those are things that you could take to your business now that you've been inspired a little bit. Or maybe you're just an employee trying to understand why your boss is crazy. Maybe those will help you understand them a little bit better In our day lives. Dave's the chief operating officer for Seed Planning Group and I am the chief operating officer for Seed Planning Group and I am the chief executive officer. So our executive team, we work in tandem with another fellow named Bill Hamilton, our CFO, and we talk about and work on this stuff every single day, trying to build a better company, trying to build a better future for our employees, a better future for our clients, trying to help people overcome challenges, becoming better personally and professionally. So this is our life experience we're trying to share with people. Hopefully this inspires you or teaches you a little bit of something that you can do for yourself. As always, though, do us a favor, like or subscribe to us. Wherever you are listening or watching, share this with a friend so other people can see it or hear it, and that would help us a ton, and we appreciate that. Dave.
Speaker 1:
Our takeaway today job titles. Titles are used to calculate relative value specific to compensation. So this will be an interesting conversation, and this is brought to you by C Planning Group, our day job, actually, the company that we actually work for. C Planning Group is a fee-only fiduciary, a wealth management firm that helps people overcome the challenges that are keeping them from personal fulfillment. Check them out at seed pg. That's seed pg as in planning group dot com. All right, dave, back to our show less seed, more about what we're doing, actually, more about what Ben Horowitz is talking about. Titles are used to calculate relative value. What do you want to talk about? Titles? Do you like titles? I think titles are bullshit. Just so you know what I feel about them yeah.
Speaker 2:
I knew that I tend to agree with you.
Speaker 1:
Do you think there is an importance to titles in any way? Yeah, I think it is important, like if we were talking about tours of duty. Right, and I think ben makes this point too. Look, you may not be here forever, but the title is going to matter when it goes on your resume, right, right, and part of our job, if we're developing people, is to give them the tools that they need for the next step, and that title may become in handy. We joked about it for a while our compliance manager position. We wanted to call it pit boss because we wanted it to be more about interacting with the employees and less about quality control, as far as less authoritarian and more educational. But you can't put pit boss on your resume and have somebody go. Oh, I'm so glad that you were a pit boss, right, compliance manager carries a lot more weight with it.
Speaker 2:
Right, yeah, so and that's. I make a similar point with the external type of factor to job titles. Right, and you see this with clients, any type of service industry, I would think and to say like, but see it in our planners, if somebody has a title as a senior wealth manager or something you know, a financial planner, as opposed to an associate planner, someone who's just starting out and kind of learning the ropes.
Speaker 2:
that carries weight. So you know, internally we all have our importance to our roles and what we're doing and different specialties as we move into these new titles. But the importance I think really comes not necessarily internally as we work as a team, but externally, when a client looks at okay, maybe this is who I'm working with or I know this person is seeing my information or working on my case and that type of thing. So I think there's importance there and say, when it's not client-focused, you look at. You mentioned our titles at the beginning of the episode it carries weight.
Speaker 2:
If I reach out to a vendor I want to see a demo or learn something more about a software, a title carries weight in getting a response, or getting people to respond to you right, as opposed to someone that's looked at as more junior and you're not going to get the response maybe as quickly or as effectively.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. So I think you have some good points there. I think you know who do I talk to when I have a problem. That's going to give a client a lot of confidence, right, I'm talking to the manager, or I'm talking to the VP, or something like that. And also, who am I working with? You know, that's going to give you a lot of confidence. I'm working with somebody who looks like they have the competency of somebody I should be working with, or even community involvement, which is, you know, dealing with vendors and stuff like that. Like am I? You know, if you just have associate on there, that's very different if you're trying to get an appointment at an important law firm versus if you're the you know VP of client services or something like that. You know it's just, it's, it's a, or the CFO, or something you know it does. It does carry some weight.
Speaker 1:
So I think I think maybe you're convincing me here that titles are a little bit important or or could be more important than I, than I think my frustration with titles and why I call them bullshit is because a title is not an entitlement. Yes, and what we end up with titles a lot of time is a lot of fricking drama over who gets what title, and not always a great correlation with what the job is with that title. It's like I want the title, but you know I don't want all this stuff that comes with the title, the traditional title, and so that's where all the drama seems to be. We want to make ourselves look bigger than we are. We're not even being honest with ourselves sometimes. And then that comes with some entitlement. Sometimes I get, you know, somebody gets in the title. So now you know I'm the boss, I don't got to listen to anybody else.
Speaker 1:
It's like not in a warrior society, right? Like in what we're talking about with you know, you build a culture where everybody is a warrior. Guess what, you know? It's like there's a dozen other people who are going to take your head off. It doesn't matter what your position is, and I expect that as a CEO, and for you too. As a CEO, I want to walk in a room and I want to make sure, I want to know that people will hold me accountable If I'm doing something really stupid. I want them to be able to say, dude, that we don't do that here. What's your problem? Yep, you know and and and have that type of conviction in them. Um, you know, that's what I'm looking for. I want that type of environment, regardless of what the title is. So to me, the title part and the entitlement, that's where I have a problem yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2:
I love that you swayed me back a little bit, right okay?
Speaker 1:
yeah, okay, this is a war and title does not mean entitlement.
Speaker 2:
I love that. Now the flip side again right Is you just go back the other way. Yeah, you, you walk in the room, right, your CEO, you walk in the room and you act a certain way and you want to set that tone so that that set. Like you, you can't get higher than CEO, right? So like CEO walks in and they're saying here's the tone, if I'm not being honest here, I'm not doing my job, I want you to tell me.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, good point.
Speaker 2:
That's a big message coming from the CEO, instead of you know, someone coming in and just saying, hey, you know again carries more weight from senior leadership to say that and mean it and say hold me accountable.
Speaker 2:
So that's again where I think title can come in. As it is, it could be important. It's important if you use the right way, right. It doesn't mean the title does not make you a leader. The actions and the way you use the title effectively will make you the leader, because people want to follow you for your actions so that gets back to your humbleness right right.
Speaker 1:
So something we talk about all the time in the show, a key virtue, virtue being something that you live by, that you actually do an actual action, just not something you talk about. So a key virtue of employees that we look for is humbleness. And you know, from from from that perspective, I've had conversations with you and Bill, our from from that perspective, I've I've had conversations with you and Bill or CFO in meetings before where I didn't understand the impact of my words on somebody. And Bill, you know Bill's kind of like that, that splash of cold water. Like you know you get smacked in the face and he's like what's your problem? It's like I don't understand why that person's reacting. He's like Travis, you're the CEO. Like everything you say to him means X. I'm like oh shit.
Speaker 1:
You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:
And because you don't think of titles that way.
Speaker 1:
Because it's the title To me. I don't think of the title like that, but that doesn't mean that the entry-level employee doesn't Right? So I think.
Speaker 2:
I'm swaying you more a little bit here.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, you sold me. I guess titles are important. We just need to make sure that we set up a culture that does not allow titles to become entitlement. Love it.
