The Freedom to Be Yourself: My Conversation with Amy Bruske of Kolbe Corp

All right, well welcome back to Noob School. We've got a such a special guest that she's

calling in. She's not here in the studio with us. Amy Brusky, the president of Colby,

out in your infinix, right? That's right. Yeah, I've been out there. I've visited you guys.

You were here. I'm certified. That's right. You are it for everyone to know.

You have gone through an exceptional three-day training that people apply for and you are

one of our Colby experts. Well, I'm very glad to hear that. Your mom actually made a

comment to me during class when she saw my numbers, 3, 3, 9, 3. She just looked at me and

she kind of put her hands on her hips and she said, are you married? Yes, she goes,

you must have a very patient wife. Exactly. Well, good. I'm looking forward to getting

into what that means, but you are a will or a won't use the column. You have exceptional

strengths as do many people, but in your case, there's such an amazing niche of what you

do well, so it's exciting to hear how you put it. Very narrow sliver. It's so amazing.

Well, for the people who are also just tuning in, I would like you to like and subscribe

to our podcast so we can reach more people. So please do that. It takes two seconds.

But Amy, we did meet. I think it was two years ago when I came out there. One of the reasons

I came out was I wanted to go through the training so I would learn even more about this

test that I've been using for so long. What else could I learn? The way I got to know

you in your company was, I mean, I don't know how long it was, but it was Billy and it

had to be maybe 30 years ago when he was doing the consulting for Colby. We live in the

same town and he somehow called on me. I don't know how that happened because I was a

young, idiot sales manager. I had about 10 people. I didn't know what I was doing. He

said, what's going on with your sales? And I said, well, they're not good enough. Nobody

will make their call calls and all this stuff. I was just whining, just whining. And

he looked up at the board and he said, well, I see this guy taught up there. He's doing

pretty well. And I'm like, yeah, well, Todd's doing good. But the rest of them stink. And

he said, well, what if all of them were like Todd? I was like, what? What a dream. What

a dream. I didn't even know that was possible. And so he, you know, when he told me how he

would do it with looking at Colby and the other things that came from and it completely changed

my life. I mean, because I was then able to hire the right kind of people for my job.

And we grew a tiny little company to a great big company with that one trick pony, just

getting the right people. And there's a lot more to Colby, but that thing really helped

me. And I'm always been thankful. I love that. Yeah. And I don't know that story. That

is great. And when you build a team based on strengths, not only did you get what you

needed, but you put people in the roles that love their job. And that's the goal, right

is there are lots of skills that people have and they could do. So everyone listening,

you could do a lot of things. The question is, should you, should you, is that where you're

going to be in the zone and you're in flow and the day flies by. And so what he was able

to do is say, let's look at really what people are bringing to the table and find people

where they're going to be perform well for you. And they're going to be more committed

and engaged and love their role too. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I was one time, I've been through

every piece of the ups and downs of the Colby situation because when I was in college,

I had an internship working with a construction company out in California. I thought this

is going to be great working construction. You know, this is, and so I wasn't working

construction. I was in the trailer. I was in the office. And my job was to process the

paperwork every day and write it all down who showed up on time. I could not stay awake.

Yeah. I mean, I was so bored. I was just, I was just fall asleep all day long. They

thought I was on drugs or something because it was such a gets migraine. But again, that's

the thing. Until you know your, your Colby situation, you don't know why this is happening

to you. Right. And it's not bad to have a job that is so against your nature and experience

that once in your career. I've always said, I wish that for my, even my own kids because

they, if and when they become leaders, they'll be a little bit more empathetic to that.

But it's almost like dating, you know, you, you date some people for a while to also help

you figure out what you don't want. You very quickly figured out, okay, this is what

I'm not going to do. This is, you know, this is not for me. So, yeah.

Well, I was fortunate to get to meet your mom before, before she passed away. I'm very

sorry about that. But what a life she had. That's right. Yeah. Kathy Colby. And she was

my stepmom. But honestly, she's been my mom since I was 19 years old. So, you know,

and so it's been over 40 years. But what a force. I mean, not only did she affect me personally

because she was my mother for so long, but professionally, she's the person that drove

my, my very first important career decision. I didn't know anything about Colby. I knew

it was a company she ran and she found it. But what she did really early on for me, I was

in a career. I was in my late 20s. And I had really worked my way up the corporate ladder.

I had told myself, I'm going to say yet for the next five years, I'm going to say yes

to anything that comes my way. I don't know why, but I had that in my head. And I just

said, I'm going to say yes. So I had moved five times. I had lived in San Diego, Washington,

DC, back to LA again. I'd done all these roles. Some were great for me, some were not.

But I was measuring my success by I'm moving up the ladder. I'm making more money than

a lot of my friends. I'm doing all the right things. And one day she said, I'd be curious

to hear how you define success. Like what's your definition of success? And I said, well,

I guess I'm doing it. This is success. I'm, you know, I'm, I'm moving forward in my

career. And she said, well, I define success as the freedom to be yourself. And I had never

heard that. I had never thought of that. I'm like, what kind of craziness is this? But as

she said that, I realized on the surface, things were great. But I was absolutely miserable.

I really hated my job. I was so drained by the weekend that I couldn't even do anything.

And so although I was capable and I kept getting promoted for things that really weren't

in my sweet spot, this was not going to work for me long term. And the corporate world

wasn't great for me. I knew that I was probably better suited for entrepreneurial life. But

with that one question, how do you define success? It really changed. And I absolutely

radically changed my career trajectory at that point. And so she really affected me professionally

too. And of course, became one of my, my mentor for a long time. Yeah. How wonderful.

What type of industry was that in? You were climbing the ladder in.

So I was in weight loss industry. So I was in Jenny Craig weight loss centers when we

were growing rapidly. And I was specifically in the franchise department. So I know a lot

about franchising. So I worked directly under the VP where we would sell stores. I would

go in there. I would train them. I'd get all of the franchises up and running. And then

I was going back when we were buying them back. And it wasn't working. So I also got

to see that. What is it? To be a franchisee. And then I moved into sales training. So I ran

an entire division. I ran the Holy Coast of sales trainers. And so I'm really passionate

about people and sales and making sure that that you're doing, if you're in sales that

you get to do sales your way and that there's different, there's different roles for people

in sales, depending on your strengths. So I did that for a long time. And then just

basic operations. Yeah, I learned a lot. Wow. What a company. That was you were with.

I'm sure they were growing like crazy. They were. Yeah. It was fun.

Well, on that topic of sales people and different types of Colby scores, you know, I have

found in my very simplistic view, generally speaking, I want to get at least a four, at

least a four, at least a four, a four or less. And if someone is over those ranges or under

in one case, it's acceptable. That is good. The perfect one for me is something like a, you

know, six, six, eight, three, you know, where you have more fact finder follow through a lot of

quick start and almost no implementer. And when I get those kind of people for you at that,

is this so, this is for someone that works for you or for sales? Okay. So those would be salespeople.

But I know when you have someone, and again, what I've seen is when you have the higher fact finder

follow through and a higher quick start, those people aren't going to stay in sales for very long.

Right. They're going to become managers. You're going to have their own business. And I've

just seen my father was is one of those people. Yeah. My old partner was one of those people.

It was just like they're all destined to be leaders. I guess because they're more balanced,

and they have a higher natural capacity to deal with those things than other people.

Yeah. I think depending on the environment they're in, they do really well in some bigger

organizations and are able to do the level of detail and strategy and all of that versus like

the true entrepreneurs are kind of off the cuff. And they are they're experimenting at all time.

They're building the plain while they're flying it, you know, that statement. And that works

in the entrepreneurial world. In fact, you have to do some of that. So when you say destined to be

leaders, I think in a more traditional sense, absolutely. And for me being very entrepreneurial and

I emanate and quick start, I was just drowning in it. It was great when the organization was brand new.

I was there really on the ground floor. We were really entrepreneurial. And then the minute it started

getting very established, lots of rules we had to. I mean, that was the deal. It was starting

to not work for me anymore once it wasn't new every day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm happy to

describe that for people that are listening. Like what what are we talking about when we're measuring

cool beats so they know when you say, yeah, I'm sorry. I forgot I forgot to bring that up. So please

yeah, let me throw that out there because I know you you and I talk about this so naturally because

this is what we do. This is what it's like to be in with a bunch of people in Colby world.

So let me just say a couple quick things. First of all, Colby measures how you solve problems,

make decisions, and execute. So you have a natural way, an instinctive way of getting things done.

And this is different from your intelligence or your personality. So think of you know play

to an Aristotle. It's long been established that there's three different parts of the mind,

the thinking, the feeling, and the doing. So thinking what are your intelligence, what are your

skills that you have? What are you capable of? The feeling part is about what's your personality type?

What do you like? What do you value? What do you prefer? So are you more of an introvert or

you more of an extrovert? And when you think about salespeople, especially we think there are some

personality types that work really well in certain kinds of sales, right? But that's all your

personality. And anyone listening, if you've ever taken Myers-Briggs or disc or predictive index

or clipped in strength, strengths, finder, any of those kinds of assessments, those all fall under

a personality test. So this third part of the mind is this missing piece that is you might have

the skills to do things and the desire or preference to do it, but this is the how will you naturally

execute? And that's the part of the mind that we measure exclusively at Colby. And it's directly

tied to results because it's about actually getting things done. So if you're a leader,

you want to make sure that you understand what's needed in a role and that we're getting people

that match that, which you did brilliantly in your job as a sales leader. But as an individual,

you know, my advice to people all the time is constantly beyond this journey to discover your

strengths in all three parts of the mind, but do not leave out this one piece because this isn't

all of our test three test studies show. It doesn't change over time. You are the same person that

you were in high school. Think about when you did your best work on a project, were you the

person that crammed and waited till the last minute and did your best work at the very end?

Did you do a little bit at a time? Were you great at research? That's not changing. So quit trying

to be more organized if that's not your deal, whatever it is, right? So that's what Colby measures.

And we just look at four different things. We look at what do you do with information?

What do you do with organization? How do you handle change and risk? And what do you do with the

three-dimensional world? And so all of those, there's no good or bad, right or wrong. It's just

a continuum, right? So in the most obvious thing is information. Are you someone that naturally needs

a lot of detail and information or you someone that bottom line sings? You and I, John, both being

three on a scale of one to ten on that fact finder mode, we bottom line things. We simplify,

we bullet point things. We skip right over the details, right? We'll jump to the end.

So follow through, scale of one to ten, how do you organize? Are you someone that's more

traditionally systematic? Will you file things and strive to finish one thing before you start

the next? Or do you actually get energy from jumping around, doing a little bit of one thing,

move into the next and you're more naturally adaptable? By the way, there's people in the middle

too, so I'm giving you the extreme. Quick start, what do you do with change? And that is think about

someone who's just going to naturally jump in, experiment, try things, take a risk, do things that

had never been done before and naturally innovate. Are you someone who's really good at stabilizing

and maintaining what's working? Or are you in between somewhere? And then implementer, you were talking

about doing construction, what we find in the construction world is people who really thrive

being hands on and doing hands on construction. They're really tied into doing things in a concrete

way with their hands, with tools, whatever, up to someone who's more abstract, doesn't have to

see it to believe it. So those of you that really thrive in finance and some of those kinds of

things there. And I love sales examples there. My husband is a nine on a scale, one to ten,

an implementer. He sells real estate. He sells a tangible product and he's really good with that.

But I know a lot of people in banking finance insurance, they're all in the one to three. They're

selling a service. They're not selling something tangible. So that's kind of the overall,

we all have those instincts. As I said, they're no good or bad right or wrong, but the sooner you

really tap into them, you will find that you can get so much more done and just love the role

that you're in. I agree. And again, I want your feedback on this, but as a sales coach now,

I so often go into a new company and they're not happy with whether salespeople are doing this or

that. And then I test them in the Colby test and I'm like, well, no wonder. You know, you're asking

somebody with no quick start to make call calls. And so we just need to get the right people for the

jobs you have. And try to come up with an avatar of what we're looking for, the perfect person.

And I tell people, we're not doing anyone a favor if we hired the wrong person for the job.

That's not a favor to them. They're going to struggle. So they're going to be miserable. Yeah,

if you really like someone, people struggle with this when they hire a family or a friend,

family member, a friend where they really like them so they want to give them a job.

Make sure it's the right job for them. If you really like them, you don't want to put them in

something where they're going to be miserable. And sales is a great example of how you can have

lots of different strengths and instinctive ways of solving problem and doing well in sales. But

I'm a huge fan of sales teams like partnering up someone who's really going good at going out and

getting new business and call calling or whatever that takes. And then someone who's going to manage

that account and keep upselling that account. And oftentimes those two different parts of sales

require some different instincts. And so we find that it looks different as far as some people

are just better suited for some part of the job rather than the other. And so when I hear

you know accounting departments or something saying, the sales people aren't doing,

they're not filling out all their paperwork and they're skipping all these steps. And I'm like,

let's, are they great at what they do? Let's try and take as much of this off their plate as

possible because we already want their energy going, right? And so it is often that someone who's

really, really good at bringing a new business, they're not great at the paperwork and all that.

So what are we going to do instead of trying to change them to have more time in what their

strengths are and get them some help on the other pieces with someone who loves doing the other

piece? Yeah, you're right. Like I know you're assistant and my assistant have very similar

Colby profiles. I mean it's almost the exact opposite of who we are. We are. And the things that I

that make my heart flutter and palpitate, she likes to do. It's like a puzzle for her, you know,

all the papers and all that stuff. So yeah, everyone's got, everyone's got a place, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. And the more that you can do that. And if if you're newer in your career,

trying to figure this out, like really experiment and do a little bit of everything and figure it out

and start like really tying into where are you just so in flow? Like what, what could you do all day?

Like ask yourself that question where the day just flies by. What are those kinds of things?

Believe it or not. And maybe you can't do those all day. That's, that's not very realistic.

But what would happen if you increased it 10% or 20% like those are the little things we can all do.

And there are people like you said who love to do and are really well suited to do the things

that you don't look to do. And don't come naturally to you. I'm using the word love. It really is

about where your instincts are aligned. You end up loving them because it's aligned. But

and would it be true that somebody with a more balanced, but more balanced numbers can kind of

do any of them like normally. Yeah, if you're someone that's really in the middle on that scale of

one to 10, you're kind of in that four, five and six and in all of them or in most of them,

you tend to be someone who's a natural team player. And we call those a facilitator. And about 10%

of the population falls in that. But then there's a lot of other people that have quite a bit of

accommodation. They really do their best when they can accommodate things that are already happening

versus innovate like starting them and sparking them and initiating.

So the worst thing we could do to someone like that is put them in a room, close the door and go

just work on your own. So you need to know those things about you too. A great team member is

someone that switches gears as needed for the needs of the team. Now, Red or I listen to one of

your video testimonials from Dan Sullivan, the strategic coach guy. I mean, very famous guy.

I had no idea a guy with a 2, 2, 10 could do anything. Yeah. I mean, that's just almost impossible.

He must have a lot of, how would you figure out having your own business if you have a 2, 2, 10,

4? Yeah. Well, he tells a lot of stories about how he declared bankruptcy twice

because he really was trying to be something that he wasn't. And it wasn't until he figured out,

wow, I got to stay in my lane and quit trying to be like some of the other business owners around me.

And that happens. We compare ourselves or we pick someone who is our mentor or a guru or some

idol and we try and do business like them. That may or may not work. And so he was trying to be

something he wasn't. And then he realized he needed partnership and teamwork. And so he found

his puzzle piece and someone that could be the person that was going to do the things he wasn't.

And he said, everything changed after that. But it took him saying, I'm not going to keep trying

to be something I'm not. And then he was successful. Yeah. But it was building the team around him.

It's amazing because I would never have guessed that because he's been so successful.

I have friends that go to see him and he's just been a great, a great business.

Yeah. Absolutely. But he gets to do what he does, but he is coming up with new ideas every day.

And he's in his 80s now. And there's no end to the innovation he's going to do. So he still gets

to do that and other people bring that to life, right? Well, one of the things you said earlier about

not changing, I was just thinking about, you know, I had a really good friend in high school

who, when we had to do a term paper or something hard like that,

I, of course, I'd put it off until can I ask the teacher for an extension. That's how far I

put it off. I mean, I couldn't do it. And, and, and he would have his done like three weeks early,

done, turned in. Right. Right. And that's probably the same person he is now. He is, he is,

he is a high powered, highly paid corporate lawyer doing like contract stuff for like construction

companies. Right. So like massive billion dollar kind of stuff. And it's just for him is nothing.

Right. It's just like, it sounds like he thrives in complexity and in structure. And that's where he

does his best. If you put him into entrepreneurial space, that would probably be more frustrating for

him where there's so many unknowns. Right. We would be, we would take him out of his game. And by

the way, those of you who either are younger and you remember what it was like to be in either

high school or college or you have kids, boys, it fascinating to raise kids who are so different

than you. This is not genetic, everybody. Right. So if you were that planner in school, that

doesn't mean your kid is necessarily going to be, right. But you could already see where he did

his best work. School is incredibly frustrating for kids who are not detailed and structured.

Because guess what? We have data on thousands of teachers and they all look like that. So if that's

not who you are or or your kid is that school is going to be painful, but they have this amazing

successful life once they get out and they're not in the confines of there is one right way to do

things. You know, for a paper, you do an outline first and then you do your research and then you

do your bullet points and then and that there's one right way to come up with a paper, the minute

you're out of those confines, then you do much better as as you discovered, right. You're

also explains the Amy's the conflict between people like, you know, nine quick starts like me

and a teacher. They just they don't get it. They don't appreciate that someone wants to try this

or do something different. And I don't appreciate that they want structure. And it took me until

y'all came along, I was I would be angry, not angry, but not happy with many people I worked with.

I'm like, what is wrong with this person? I don't let's just do it. Okay, we know it's the right

thing. Let's just do it. Let's just jump in. Yeah, of course. We can fix it later. Yeah, this is

where we should probably stay to your strengths or not a cop out for getting done whatever it is.

You need to get done, right? So I always make a joke that, well, I'm a three in fact finder. I

don't really do details. The IRS is not going to want to hear that, right? There is no close enough

on your taxes. So same with school, if the teacher could just say in a month, this paper's due,

here's what you have to deliver. It's a presentation and whatever. It doesn't matter if you do a little

bit every single day for a month or if you wait until the last week and the night before you do your

speech and you get up there and you wing it, what matters is did you get an excellent result? And so

when we're looking at grading people on the process of how they got to the end result, we're missing

the mark. We should really grade on output and same in the workplace, right? Are they doing an

excellent job? Then that's what we're looking at versus the how they got there. Yes, yes, I've had

to deal with that. I'm sure you have too. People will say to me, I saw, I saw Michael leaving early

for lunch today or where's Perry been? He hadn't been here in three days. I'm like, they're crushing

your number. Leave me alone. That's right. And that's the kind of person probably. Here's what

this is about. People feel like salespeople are just, I'm just hitting my numbers and then I'm

going to slack off. And what I would say is, and there are probably people like that. So I'm not

saying that. That's not true. There are people who do things in sprints. They do their best work

where it's intense. It's in a sprint. I'm going to do all of it and then they need to switch gears

and take a break. You can't maintain that level. There's other people who are just going to be

steady, steady all the way along. And that's what they do. So we're going to look at results instead.

It really is, everyone has their own creative process if you think about it that way. So what is it?

I was, there's an interesting thing. I was just hearing a speaker who was talking about writing.

And he said, I was told you have to write however many it was. A thousand words every day,

if you're a writer. So he's a business writer. And this is what I do. And this is my process.

And then I listened to an interview with the woman, oh my gosh, Shonda Rhymes. I think

who wrote the TV shows, Grey's Anatomy and all these other wonderful shows. And now she's done

movies and all this. And she said, my method is, I'm just thinking about something for a while.

I don't write anything down. It could be a year later. It could be two years later. And I sit

down for two days straight. I write it and it's done. Entire TV years. But if we told her, she said,

I've been told every day you should be writing. It's like, no, that doesn't work for me.

So I thought that example was such a great example of still getting this wonderful Emmy-winning

result. But in a way that's very much in a sprint kind of format. And that works for her.

Yeah, I agree. That is certainly a, that's a, you're hiring people based on previous results.

It's a good thing. Since I'm hiring normally hiring people out of college, I'm hiring based

on previous behavior, I suppose. And I want to talk to you about this hiring avatar. And I'll

give you kind of how I do it. And you can critique it. And Bill helped me with this way back when

it really hasn't changed much. But he says, if you're hiring for a company where I live in Greenville,

South Carolina, he says, you want to hire people that are, ideally, that are kind of from here.

And I'm like, well, at least really committed to staying there. Right, committed to staying.

Because that was the reason he goes, because you don't want to hire the Oklahoma City person

that you love. And three years later, they move home. So we want to establish this community of

people around here. We'd like them to be kind of, we want to get them from the same universities

and generally the same majors. So we create this culture, right? We've got different from the,

like in your case, what's the big school out there? Is it Arizona? Arizona State University,

and then University of Arizona is two hours. Yeah. And so you probably have a lot of those people

there and creates this culture. And then we like them to be leaders, like maybe a president

or their sorority or their fraternity, maybe sports, maybe they played sports in high school or

college. And then of course, they got to pass the beer test. You know, do you want to have a beer

with them? Right? We don't want anyone to work with us. We wouldn't pass that test. And then

the last piece, usually if we got through all that, the last piece for us was, does the Colby match?

What typically works for us? Right. Right. That sounded like a good avatar for you. Yeah. So you have

a little bit of everything. When we talked about the three parts of the mind, you've got some of

their basic experience and knowledge. And in this case, sounds like you at least want them to have

a college degree in most cases, correct? So that's kind of, yeah. So that's kind of my, your check-off

of skills and experience. They may have some job experience too, right? But you're also saying,

hey, a little bit of leadership experience in whatever they were in. Sports is interesting because

you get to learn how to be on a team. So all of that is here, the type of experiences that we know

works in our company. And then the personality part is, do I want to have a beer with them?

And hopefully what you're doing is you're asking enough questions about do their values match?

Your organizational values. Do they care about the same stuff? Are they going to mesh well with the

team? In whatever way that is, right? And then that third piece is the doing part. So you're covering

all three pieces. And that's what, you know, that's what we want. And whatever you find works,

some other organization might find there's something a little bit different. But I know for us,

you know, based on our values, there's a few things I've seen along the way that works. Number one is,

are they mission driven? Do they care about what Colby does? They can be an excellent performer,

but we have found, this is just in our experience, people who are really passionate about making a

difference in people's lives and are interested in kind of increasing success and human behavior.

And some of that, they just do really well with us, right? So we've got our own little criteria of

what experience and all of that is. And so figure out what that is for you and it's look at your

high performers and then go from there. And then you're trying to replicate people, which is great.

Within your entire organization, we want to create some level of diversity in their Colby

strengths, because we know teams with diversity do well, but not in a position where, if you have

10 salespeople and they're all doing the exact same job, that's where I don't want diversity.

I kind of want them to be the same, right? So, but like you just described, you have an assistant

that's totally opposite from you. That diversity and how you execute is really useful in that scenario,

right? Yeah. Yeah. Give me another little story. When I was a young salesperson,

about to be the sales manager, I suppose, for this little company I was working for

and ended up buying part of and it became a successful deal. But at the moment, it was like seven of us

and I was, I mean, I couldn't, the proposal was done. I couldn't, I couldn't get these leads

entered into the system. I mean, the easiest things in the world I couldn't do. And my partner,

my soon to be partner in the CEO of the company, he kind of, he claimed to be, yes, you know,

I think he saw the talent, you know, he saw the talent in the sales and he said, I think I'm

going to get somebody locally to come help us with the administrative things to free you up to just

focus on sales. Perfect. Brilliant. Brilliant. A domar person would have just gotten rid of me.

Well, wait, or just force you to be something you weren't. Go get it together. This is not hard.

And so I know even you're describing it as you couldn't do it, you could, but it what cost?

Like it would have been slower, it would have tortured you, it would have taken you, you would have

had no energy to do the stuff that really mattered most on the team. That we, you cannot be all

things to all people, everybody. We all want to. It doesn't work. You got to figure out what is your

best way of getting things done and then figure out who's going to fill in the gaps around you.

And that's harder when you're earlier in your career. But as you keep moving, it gets a lot easier.

Yes. Yes. You learn. And if you do the Colby early, that's a big, you know, a big advantage because

you kind of know, I don't, I'm not going to love this. I think I might like this. Yeah, you'll

give yourself a break. It's like, yeah, of course, this is frustrating to me. Sometimes the most

frustrating things are really simple and straightforward and you're fully capable of doing it.

But then you make your, you feel guilty or make yourself feel bad or even worse, you start setting

goals. I'm just going to be better at this or people give you really bad advice. Like, do the

worst things first thing in the morning. It's like, well, no, if you did all your paperwork first

thing in the morning, you've just burned through all the mental energy you had available to do great

things, creative things. And instead, you burned it up on these lower level things that someone else

would do really well. So that's, that's, that's good. Another little piece of knowledge I got on

my visit out there. I don't remember who told me, but, you know, some people would call a quick start

like or low follow through person, a procrastinator, probably maybe a procrastinator. And that y'all

said, well, don't worry about it. Just procrastinate and just leave yourself just enough time before

your meeting. Right. Get prepared and do your PowerPoint. Every have to do. That's right. So

that's, that's what I do now. It's wonderful. I love it. See, you give, you've given yourself

permission to not feel guilty about it. Here's the thing. And by the way, there's some really cool

research about what's called active procrastination. So there really are actually some body of

researching some procrastination is good. But we'll leave that aside. Let's say in the most

traditional sense, there are certain people who get an extra boost of energy when that when

it's a deadline time. Other people get stressed. For you, you do your best work when that's happening.

Same thing for me. What I know is, let's say I have to do a big presentation. And it really matters.

I'm kind of nervous about it. And I could do a little bit every night and get all my slides perfect.

Right. I have no flexibility in what I'm going to say. But sure enough, even if I try to force

myself to have this amazing presentation done the night before 10 o'clock at night in my hotel room,

I'm going to come up with some idea for an activity, for a thing or whatever that, I mean,

you could put a gun to my head and I couldn't, couldn't, couldn't come up with it two weeks before.

And it's just because that is the way that my brain works. And so for you, you're doing your best

work at the very end. That's when you're super efficient with your time, right? You're getting

some solutions in record time. Yeah. Now it's a waste of your time and mental energy to do it early

on because you're just going to change it at the end anyway. You're going to come up with something

better. So, and if you work with someone like that and you see that that's how they do things,

you just have to anticipate it. My assistant knows to plan for a last minute change. So she leaves

buffer time in toward the end knowing that right before I go into a meeting or whatever it is,

I'm going to need time to really do my best thinking at that time. So we procrastinate the things

that don't come naturally to us. And so there's a couple things you can do. Number one, just say,

does this really need to get done? Usually it does, but like really ask yourself because sometimes we're

saying yes to a bunch of stuff that really doesn't matter. So let's just say the answer is yes.

Now you have to say, can I get help on at least a part of it? One piece of it. So sometimes I will

have my assistant just read an email, do some research for me, go pull some information.

Can I do those things? Absolutely. But that just saves me a little bit of energy. So can you partner

with someone on part of it? And when it just absolutely needs to be you figure out what's your

best way of doing that? Like get in the zone for whatever way you need to get it done and minimize

the amount that you're actually working against your grain as much as you can. You know,

I'm talking high in the sky. We know that we all have to do stuff that's working against,

you know, what's natural to us. But I promise you small little changes make a huge difference.

Yeah, they do. Like you said, as time goes on, hopefully you're able, you have the means to

get more help. You know, to have more people help you. I've got plenty of help now. It's wonderful.

Yeah, but even get peers to help you. Sometimes I'll even have a friend where I'll say,

hey, can you look at this for me? I probably have missed a bunch of details. Like will you scan

this or get a peer to help you? Or I've seen salespeople pair up with certain clients together and

decide to work something out or, you know, can you be on on part of this? Because you do this really

well or whatever it might be. Okay. And can you give me a story about somebody that, like in your world,

that kind of finally understood their Colby and completely changed their world around? I mean,

I know you did that to some degree, but is there any somebody else you could talk about?

Oh boy. Yeah, there's so many. I mean, the good news is we get to hear some of these along the way.

I can tell you about a lawyer who became an entrepreneur. I mean, I see stuff like that all the time,

or, you know, where it's they went all the way down this path and they they loved the law, right?

So it's not that they don't like certain parts and aspects of the law, but they became a lawyer

had a really hard time passing the bar really hard time. I think took a third time and not maybe

that's not that hard, but this is in California. So I think that's a maybe a tougher bar. I'm not sure.

I took it for the third time. Was seriously questioning, am I going to keep being a lawyer?

You know, and early on was going to be in a career where they were doing corporate law,

like really detailed stuff, contracts, all of that, discovered, really looked at their Colby

strengths and realized that they were someone that needed to be doing something different every day.

So went to work for the city attorney's office was doing trials every single day. You would stand

up in court and you're prosecuting drug dealers and it was just like multiple cases every day just

standing up and he started thriving in that so well that all of a sudden they started giving him

special projects and he got to create projects for the city that included innovative stuff they've

never done. So for example, young people who were going to jail automatically for a pretty

minor crime that they committed, he created a whole restitution program that hadn't really been

done in the country before where people from the community came together and decided what else

could this youth do to, you know, have some kind of paying back what they had done and hopefully

avoid jail, but still really put in time, right? There had to be some changes made and all that.

And this became a model for all around the country of what we can do to prevent people from going to

jail. But he found a way to, he loved the law, but most traditional law was never going to work for him

to become much more innovative and kind of run his own department. It was almost like running an

entire company and did great, but he was so beaten down by the time he got through the bar

because here he was a smart guy, but just the way they were asking him to write the information

was so formulaic and some of these things and he just didn't work that way. But the minute he got

out in the workplace in the right role, he was thriving and he's been innovating ever since.

So there's all kinds of mediation stuff he's done. And yeah, I mean, there's, but we have heard

from a lot of people that have just radically changed their career. And so, you know, what I always

say to young people is there is no one career path. I did just share a story with you where this

person got to take their law and put it into play. But I sat in a room with a bunch of women

business leaders. This was a couple of years ago and we all went around the room. There were 12 of

us and told the story of where did you start your career and where are you ending now? So they all

own businesses. My goodness, one started as an EMT and now she owns the largest business furniture

company and tech company. I mean, that so wide vast. So just, you have to just, just start.

Don't think everyone's got this straight career path. That's, I almost know, I know very few

people were so linear that you have to have a plan. You just have to be doing and discovering

and meeting people along the way. I agree. I agree. I do know some people that have that

that career path where they kind of knew what they wanted to do and went to college and

sometimes graduate school and you know, very few of those people aren't doing very well.

Like they're all like, they kind of knew I wanted to do that. I wanted to be an accountant or

whatever. Yep. And just the mileage of doing that every, every year for 20, 25 years, you know,

you're going to be pretty successful. But it's hard to do. It's hard to think about. But the

Colby does help, you know? Yes. Yes. Knowing that gets you going in the right position in the

right direction, I should say, and choosing and choosing really well. It's about, I feel like

understanding your strengths gives you like this lens. It's like putting on glasses for the first

time and all of a sudden decisions become more clear. You know what to say yes to and what to say

no to and you know what you just let go and not feel guilty about. You're not going to just be

naturally doing things naturally and everything that you take on. You're not going to be great at

everything. You're just not. That's not the goal. No. No. And I think it also helps

eliminate to to a large degree the comparison game where I see this person my friends doing so

well. He's a the high priced lawyer in Atlanta. Oh, I want to be like him. I'm like, no John,

you got to be you. That's the only chance I got to be successful is to do what I could do.

That's right. And yeah. I talk to a lot of people in their 50s and 60s who take their

Colby index for the first time and they'll say I wish I would have known this years ago. I would

have made different choices. So yes, it's all about just starting down this journey a lot earlier

where you're figuring out your strengths. Yeah. I tell you what else. This is just a little sidebar

on sales. But you know the fact that Bill Lee found me as a young sales manager struggling

with a relatively small company and made an appointment and came it kind of cold called me.

Yeah. And changed my whole life. Right. Now, I mean, because of the Colby and

it just goes to show you if you're in sales and you have something that can help people,

you really should not be deterred, but to get in there and help them. Oh my gosh.

Find a way. That's right. Everything you're selling. If you're in sales, someone really needs it.

Like that's absolutely the case. You were doing important work. Yeah. So as we start to wrap up

here, I know any individual that wants to do this can simply go to colby.com and take the Colby A test,

right? Yeah, absolutely. 15 or 20 minutes doesn't cost much money and you get the results the same day.

That's right. It's just it's a great investment and you figuring out who you are and you'll get

a pretty thorough report and then you'll get some audio too. You can listen to it online and

listen to the audio and it's Kathy Colby interpreting your result. But yeah, start with your

index and then hopefully have someone else that you either work with or live with or your most

important relationships, then it really helps to compare and have them do it as well. Right.

And then if you're if you were a business owner that will really help you with your own self,

you could do it with your team to better understand Charlie or Nancy. And you can do a special

thing where you you figure out the exact profile of the salespeople, right? Yeah. Yeah. So if you

are a leader, then you can have your team do their colby indexes and look at some team reports or

just sit down and have some activities together. And then as you're hiring, there's a process for

using colby and hiring too. That's just going to help you take a little bit of the guesswork out of

it. We all fall in love with candidates. You know, you meet with them face to face and you really

like them. Yeah. Well, you also want to know how are they naturally going to execute? So you're

putting them in a role where they're going to succeed as well. I must admit to something that

may violate some type of OSHA rule or something. But you know, when we were hiring a lot of people,

if they did not pass certain things, including the colby thing, I didn't want to meet them for

that very reason. I didn't want to say, I really like Amy. Let's bend the rules for Amy. It's like,

no, we have a standard in the ideal. Yeah. The I don't process for colby would really be that you

would do it before you even meet them. You can have a thumb screen. You can, you know, do a little

bit of that. Yeah. But first of all, as a leader, your most expensive part of your day, your time

is so valuable. So to meet with candidate after candidate who aren't going to execute the way you

know, that's just not a good use to your time. So screen them first. And if you follow our process,

it's, you know, it's really focusing on making sure that you meet and exceed the EEOC guidelines.

So we're going to say, hey, what do you want in this role? You have them take it. Now you're just

screening out and you're only meeting with the people that are falling within a certain range

that is acceptable to you. Yeah. It saves everyone time. Well, I must say that, you know,

your company, colby, which all do really helped me personally to be a better kind of person,

better entrepreneur. It really helped me with my business. And so I recommend everybody try it out

and talk to colby about it. Do you have any final, final words, Amy? No. And let me just confirm

do you want them to contact us or do you want them to contact you? I want them to contact you

directly. Okay. You're also an expert that can do this. But yeah, I am, I mean, yeah, I am,

I'm a sales coach mainly and I have them that deal directly with you. Yeah. So yeah, you just

want to go to colby and colby is spelled with a K everybody. So K-O-L-B is envoy E dot com.

And that's where you can take the colby index and get more information. But also where you can

either find our phone number or, you know, email us at info at colby.com and we're happy to help

whatever whatever it is. We just we want to spread the word. We want we want to have a whole

workplace where people are thriving and just and love what they're doing and in it's possible

everybody. If you have a can build a team and make sure you're getting to use your strengths,

what a difference it makes. And it's important for your most important relationships by the way too.

So as a side note, we do also have youth indexes for about a fourth grade reading level on up

and parenting a parent guide. So I feel like I can't imagine not knowing this about my kids.

They're much older now. But it's also for your significant other or your kids and the kind of

stuff too. Yeah, wonderful. Well, thank you very much. It's been delightful. Thank you for taking

time and hopefully I'll be back out there for a recertification real soon. Oh, that's great.

Thank you so much, John. Thank you. Okay, stay on for a second if you would.

How what did you like it? That was great. That was fun. Thank you. I wasn't sure if I was going

exactly where you wanted me to go on some of the stuff, but oh, it was great. I love talking coldly

with you. It's wonderful. That's fun. Yeah, it's so good. And I I'm so thrilled. You know,

what you do in sales. I'm so passionate about sales just being a sales trainer for a while.

Because you know, we used to train on process. I used to train on scripts. Yeah.

My sales training was you had to memorize scripts. And guess what? The people who didn't do

their scripts often were my best salespeople. So I really discovered our training programs were not

working for certain types of salespeople. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm a big part of what

I do for companies is get their team hired right, get the right people. And then just, you know,

provide training, get the comp plan right, things like that. But it all bases around the people.

And that's what the owners don't understand. It's really hard. It's hard to get them to understand it.

Do you have some sales positions that you've seen that really are more fact find or follow through

kind of sales? I will tell you that I've seen that in high tech companies. So where they have

these insane integrations that take forever. And you really have to be a knowledge expert in depth.

That kind of sale. I do find more fact find or follow through versus some of the others that are

more initiating quick start driven. That's exactly what I would have said. We have,

you know, we didn't sell really big stuff for a while. And so we never hired people with a

lower quick start. But we had one hired one who was literally a two or three quick start lots of

fact find or follow through like eights. I hired him because he went to the Citadel. He was a

high ranking guy on campus. He was a champion baseball pitcher. Everything I just loved the guy.

Unfortunately, I met him before I saw the Kobe, right? And he did okay until we gave him the Miami

Day Florida deal, which took two and a half years to close. And it was $25 million deal.

But I could have never done that deal. I mean, it was like all the details.

He probably had 70 people in the county he was dealing with. Right. All the government kind of stuff.

Yeah, that's a different kind of sale. Yes. So those those kind of people, I think, are good at

those monster long term like selling jets or something like that. That's right. Really technical,

really in depth. Definitely. That was a good point about government, like dealing with bureaucracy

of any kind, whether it's a university or yeah, that kind of thing. By the way, I'm curious because I

was hearing one of your podcasts where you're talking about basketball. You know, what my husband

used to be a professional baseball player. Yeah. And so one of my favorite examples is figuring out

athletes and how their cognitive strengths play out. We don't do that much with that anymore

because you know, Kathy helped the Phoenix Suns pick some draft picks for a few years.

But anyway, I would if you're ever doing anything with young athletes, let me know because I'm just

super curious still. We do have several certified people, by the way, that are working with teams,

like entire college golf teams and other kinds of things, a soccer team. And so there's some really

fun stuff we're doing with. Yeah. Yeah. With younger people and sports. There's a golfer. Well, thank you

for that golfer named blah blah Watson. Yeah. So that guy's got to be a 12 quick start. I mean, he's

never taken a lesson. Yeah. He just he just steps up there and walks it. Yeah. And and just kind

of feels it somehow, you know. Well, I remember that film Nicholson used to get criticized a lot

because he was taking too many risks. And he's like, I'm not going to stop. That's the way I play.

Yes, it seems like this was the safe way to do it. Done deal. Sometimes it works for me. Sometimes

it doesn't. I don't care. And I heard an interview and I went, oh, there's probably a one, two or three

and follow through an initiating quick start because he's kind of like, yeah, sometimes I'm just

not going to do what the conventional wisdom says. And it doesn't work sometimes. It doesn't matter

to me. I'm still going to do it. Well, we do we do a thing. If you have more time, we do a thing

at the end where if you want to, you can ask me a couple of quite like two or three questions.

And we just call it turn the tables. Do you want to ask anything? Anything pointed?

Well, sure. I just kind of asked you a few things. So I don't know. Is there anything you can ask

him again? You can ask whatever you want. It's just we do a turn the tables to give you a chance

to kind of grill me for a minute. Okay. Well, then yes, I'll ask you a couple of things related

to what we just talked about. That'd be great. Okay. So are we ready, gentlemen?

Okay. All right. Now we're going to play the game. Everyone's been waiting for turn the tables

with Amy Brusky. Go ahead, Amy. Okay. So I want to ask you because you are truly a sales expert.

I just want some I would love to know what do you find makes a great salesperson first.

And then I'll ask you a cognitive question too. Like what are some of the traits that you think

makes a great sale? I like to hire people around from the area. Okay, because I don't want them

to leave and go somewhere else. If I'm hiring locally, I want to get them that are from here,

are going to stay here. I like them to be have some leadership, even if it was in high school.

Cap into the soccer team, you know, something. I like them to pass what we call the beer tests.

Although if you drink beer, Amy, but somebody that you'd like to go have a beer with, we don't want

anyone that we wouldn't have a beer with to kind of be hanging around with us all the time.

And then we kind of like them to have gone to a few common schools. Not just anything wrong

with the other ones, but if you just hire from two or three local schools, you develop a nice culture

in your company of similarity. And then lastly, of course, they have to have the right call me number

or they ain't getting it. Right. And so what's your superpower in selling? What makes you a great salesperson?

Um, you know, I think over time, I've learned how to put myself in the other person's shoes

to truly not not go in there thinking I've got to make a sale, but to really with empathy,

try to understand where they're coming from. And if it's a good fit, you know, to work on that

together like as partners versus, you know, trying to show them this. And this is what we do. And

that kind of thing, I don't, I can't even do a demo. So, um, I think the empathy to understand what

they really need and then try to fulfill that for them. Okay. Yeah. That's great. And do you think

that can be trained or is that just learned over time? Absolutely. Or I guess there are some

people more naturally empathetic to begin with. I think some people are, but in general, when I go

into a new sales team in general, they're there like if you were a new lead, they're saying,

well, nice to meet you. Amy, let me show you my product and why it's so good. They go right to the,

you know, the demo. And the person's putting up with those that with their arms.

That's right. Okay. Whatever, what they what they want to do is just the opposite. They want to

say, well, Amy, it's so nice of you, uh, so nice of you to to want to talk to us. Tell us about

your situation. What's going on there? You know, and then you, oh, you gladly tell me what's

going. You want to talk. And so we teach people to do that. That's great. Yeah. I love that.

Okay. What is the biggest piece of advice you give to people right now in their 20s about their

careers? Well, um, I do this a pretty good bit. So I should have more of a pat answer. But, I mean,

well, I'm asking you because I'm working with people in their 20s and I need your wisdom. So,

okay, I'll tell you what I'd say. What I'd generally tell them is, um, you know, we,

ideally, we want to find out what's easy for us and provide it to people that that's hard for.

And so that's the goal is what is an easy thing for me to do this hard for other people. Like,

for me, coaching a sales team is completely easy. I mean, I don't have to prepare for it. It's just

I know exactly what to do for somebody else. It would know the first thing about it. And so,

so I think that's that's a that's kind of a broad answer. If you get a little more narrow,

I would say, you know, using tools like the Colby, you can quickly start to identify, you know,

what's your most likely to be a good match for? And I don't know if you remember it was a while

back when I did my Colby, Amy, but you told me that I should be either an entrepreneur,

which I am or an emergency room doctor or a circus clown. Those are my three things. So,

I don't have a field result. Everyone, there's no circus clowns in the result anymore, but yes.

So yeah, I mean, figuring out that area, like I've got friends going back to college in high school

that just got on the wrong bus. And it's like, it's kind of like, here's what you don't want to do.

Don't say, well, my job is to get a job at a college. I want to get a job. I want to get a high

paying job. No, that's not your job. Your job is to figure out where you want to be. Where can

you add the most value? Where do you, like you said? Where do you have a delightful day? You know,

it's easy for you. That's your job is to figure out where that is. And then go find that where

those people are. Get a job there. Yeah, I love that. And as you said, where you add most value.

So I love that you're saying, you know, where are you, where can you contribute? And we downplay

what comes easily to us. So sometimes, like you're saying, people just naturally are like, well,

that's not important. It's like, no, no, no, what you do very naturally, other people do not do.

So don't minimize what comes easy to you. So, oh, good. Thank you. Well, those are my two

questions. I love it. You really grilled me. All right. Well, thanks, Amy. We'll see you,

see you next time. All right. Thank you.