Today, Brian Bogert joins host Islin Munisteri to talk about people before process, and people before profits. When scaling a team, he asks three key questions:
The gifts and jobs only you can do?
The job someone else can do?
Things that don't need to be done.
As a human behavior and performance coach, speaker, and business strategist Brian Bogert teaches disruptive strategies on how to create sustainable growth and lasting change personally and professionally. He and his team have the vision to impact a billion lives by 2045.
Connect with our guest, Brian Bogert, on LinkedIn.
Transcript
[00:00:20] Islin Munisteri: Awesome. Hi everyone. This is Islin Munisteri with yes strategies and I'm host of the rev ops careers podcast. Today. We're going to have a little bit of a different podcast. We're interviewing Brian Bogert. He is a human behavior and performance coach speaker and business strategist. Brian Bogert teaches disruptive strategies on how to create sustainable growth and lasting change personally and professionally, he and his team have a vision to impact a billion lives by 2045.
[00:00:52] Welcome to the show, Brian.
[00:00:54] Brian Bogert: I'm excited to be here.
[00:00:56] Islin Munisteri: Awesome. So let's start by seeing how we can really help the rev ops community. So we're going to talk about people before process, and I guess why would you wanna put people before process or do you wanna have process first and then have the right people sitting on the bus?
[00:01:14] Brian Bogert: I am a big believer that no matter what we do in this world, people are involved. People are the focus. People are the things that keep processes moving. They're the ones who build the processes. They're the ones that deliver the processes. They're the ones that connect with our clients. Now I'm a really big believer that as entrepreneurs, as business leaders, as.
[00:01:35] Businesses in general, it is very important to have standard operating procedures, to have processes in place. So that particularly for repeatable tasks or repeatable ways that we deliver our services or who we are to the world, that they can be done in a regular and consistent way that shows up and feels the same to the customer that builds on the customer journey and connection.
[00:01:59] However, the processes are not. The only way that we deliver in a business, they are typically a way to leverage and scale or to create consistency across the board, typically as it relates to the customer experience and journey. Anyway. And so for me, we have just this big belief that we've been in an era of focusing on what and profit being one of the very first things that organizations have focused on and using process to deliver profit.
[00:02:29] But we've lost sight of the people component. And so we've got a big belief in our world that it's who, before what and people before profits and in this case, it's people before process. So in our world, and I'll give just a little bit of context, I think it's important to understand couple of different components for me.
[00:02:46] We can talk a little bit at some point about the personal journey, I think it's extremely relevant. It relates to how we actually interact with people. But part of what I'm talking about now is on our work as a human behavior and performance, the way that we're working with cultures, to be able to protect and connect their people, to use an understanding of leadership, to understand the emotional triggers and behavioral states within organizations that might limit them from protecting, connecting their clients.
[00:03:11] We use process as a way to really understand how are we actually exhibiting, how are we connecting, communicating, building culture? How are we delivering services and how are we connecting with our clients? So it's always people. Before process, at least in the way that we view the world.
[00:03:27] Islin Munisteri: That's awesome to hear.
[00:03:28] And I guess, how do you start growing? So like a lot of teams like start their revenue operations with a team of one, and as they scale the company, the revenue operations. Team gets bigger and bigger. Like you start adding sales ops and marketing ops. Yep. So I guess how, how do people's mindsets change as they grow the team?
[00:03:51] Brian Bogert: Yep. I'm very big with every entrepreneur that I work with and I play this in my own world as well. Before I do anything, I ask myself three questions. Now this is really important to understand from the beginning, but at every point in growth along the. And I'm also gonna sit here and tell you that part of what I'm talking about is that I worked in risk management employee benefits consulting for about 15 years.
[00:04:10] We scaled over the last decade. I was in that industry, a business to over 15 million. We started with two of us ended with over 60 of us. And so the reality of it is we had over a decade of scaling our rev ops, our systems and all of our processes that really focused on that. But we had to really be clear at every state in growth and trajectory, especially in the beginning.
[00:04:31] These three questions. I use myself and I teach other people, and I think they're important to determine how we grow through different periods. I think it's very important before we do anything to always understand what are the things that only you can do? What are the things that someone else can do and what are the things that don't even need to be done?
[00:04:51] When we focus on leveraging and scaling our lives, we have to be really critical on where and how we are spending time and where, and how we are leading people, systems and processes to be able to help leverage and scale our businesses. So for me, great example, right when we started with two of us, the reality of it is that I was going to do a lot more in our world than I did when there was 60 of.
[00:05:15] Things that were not unique to me, things that anybody could do, and often even things that didn't need to be done. But I wasn't that clear on that back at this point 15, 16 years ago, the reality of it is though, is that at every stage, that doesn't mean that you don't do the activity, but that you're very clear on which activities are unique to you and which ones are not.
[00:05:35] So if you have a team of one person, you're probably gonna do everything in the. What I would ask is even if you're an entrepreneur starting as one person, be very clear on the things that feed you and the things that drain you, as well as the things that only you and uniquely you can actually accomplish for your business and for your people.
[00:05:52] For me, there's certain elements of communication, marketing content that we create that nobody else on the team can create. , but I am the one who can, there's lots of things around actually like the financial processes, the bookkeeping, different elements of building in our CRM. How are we building out customer campaigns and customer journeys?
[00:06:13] How are we actually posting things to social? What are the processes, which we do those things. I don't need to be involved in most of that, as long as I can direct it. But in the very beginning, part of even this business, as we were growing and scaling, I did everything. , but I got very clear on the things that were draining me most, but were most critical to get done.
[00:06:32] And the things that were filling me most, knowing that these aren't things I'll ever offload so that as revenue grows, opportunity grows and we can leverage and scale. The first places we replace are on the things that drain us, but are important and are not going to fit in the bucket of things that only we can do.
[00:06:48] And then it's very important for us to be thoughtful as leaders, to identify people who compliment our skill sets, because especially in small teams, you wanna make sure that the answers to those three questions, aren't the same for every single person. If all three people are like, what are the things that only I can do?
[00:07:01] And that list looks the same for every person. Then there's no way to actually leverage that team and build a process around it. So for me, it's about understanding at every stage in a. What are the things that you can actually take off your plate to focus on the places that you're gonna have the greatest impact, and then making sure that everyone fits in the right seat in the right place and that we're leveraging their unique skill sets and talents, so that most of what they do fits into that answer.
[00:07:27] That first question as well. If you build a holistic team where everybody's working on the things that only they can uniquely do, and a smaller portion of the things that others can do, and you have complete elimination of the things that don't even need to be done, that's how we get really effective.
[00:07:39] And efficient
[00:07:41] Islin Munisteri: gotcha. I was taking notes as we were.
[00:07:44] Brian Bogert: I talked fast
[00:07:45] Islin Munisteri: yes. Yes. That's awesome. It was interesting I realized that like my husband and I, we just are not good at accounting and we've churned through so many accountants and bookkeepers in the past four years before we finally decided we're going to hire someone like part-time to do this just for us.
[00:08:05] Brian Bogert: Which is beautiful. And by the way, you just did what so many business leaders don't do. They didn't recognize that the fire that they kept putting out, they were actually the arsonist oh my God. You're burning through bookkeepers. You're having the same consistent repeat problems. At some point you both took a step back and said, maybe the problem is us.
[00:08:22] Maybe we need to actually get some more help in a more structured, intentional way. So you embrace the pains required to make that shift own and accept the fact that you did were not best in that role so that you could avoid the suffering of stagnant or forever no growth because you couldn't get your head around your numbers.
[00:08:38] Islin Munisteri: Exactly. Yeah. I just real, we just realized we were not consistently sending out payments. We weren't like consistently paying bills. Like it was just, there's like just a whole accounting process that like a solo bookkeeper, at four hours a month, can't fix. Yeah. You gotta hire higher in house to fix that.
[00:08:58] Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah that, that helps a lot. And I guess. I know as you scaled, like what were the emotions, right? There's the emotions of the founders, right? There's emotions of different people in the organization as you scale. So how, like it's, for me personally, it's at times pretty overwhelming.
[00:09:18] So I guess how, like, how do you deal with those emotions? Especially as you can start on a team of say two or three people, and then a year later it's like a team of.
[00:09:30] Brian Bogert: The reality of it is there is significant pressure to growth, right? We know this we know that's how clams create pearls. It's literally under compressed pressure inside their cell. We know that diamonds are created under pressure under carbon. And so I don't mean to use two, like flippant, really common analogies right out the.
[00:09:50] but the reality of it is that if you are the leader, if you are the entrepreneur, if you are the person who's here in the beginning, you inherently are going to carry and have more weight and experience more pressure than anybody else in your. The goal would be as we scale that we are adding either at, or just ahead revenue and depending on the business model that you're in so that you can absolutely execute and fulfill your client needs when you anticipate growth.
[00:10:16] I think a lot of individuals hold on too much for too long and it causes a lot of strain in the organization. And so the emotions that start to really develop are a level of resentment, right? From the leaders to those below, they feel like they can't ever let go of things. Guess what they probably aren't actually allowing things to be, let, go for their team to fulfill and go do what they need to do.
[00:10:36] They weren't creating the ability for them to be autonomous and move forward without them. So resentment can exist. There's elements of control and scarcity that will come in literally, right? Depending on what the compression is on the cash flow, what's going on in the business, right?
[00:10:50] Anybody or everybody could be experiencing compression on the system. If you haven't allowed the freedom and the structure to. And so those emotions start translating into our businesses. One of the things that we work deeply on is really helping people understand the things that really keep them stuck.
[00:11:09] This is true in personal lives, but it's especially true in business as well. The reality of it is we believe that we're often stuck at different stages of scaling at different stages of growth because we have the wrong strategy or tactics in. That's why I always say put people before process because, oh, by the way, process, can't actually have a dynamic energy and emotion to be able to deliver and connect with those that need to be connected with.
[00:11:32] However, we need to understand that emotions can have positive and negative impacts. And so if we start operating in a business that's suffering from scarcity or elements of pressure or control or elements of perfectionism or the inability to actually offload and. Or we start developing levels of resentment because we start getting angrier.
[00:11:49] We start gas, lighting our entire teams for things that aren't getting done because of areas in ourselves that we haven't fixed as the leaders. So the reality of it is as the business grows, it forces the leaders to grow, but many don't. And so the emotional state that we work with individuals on is really understanding that it's not the strategy and tactics to keep us stuck.
[00:12:08] Again, just like processes. They're essential, they're critical for leveraging and scaling our businesses, but they're not the things that keep us stuck. The things that. Are a combination of our emotional triggers, behavioral patterns and environmental conditioning. And these are the things that keep these same cycles repeating over and over again.
[00:12:24] That's why you and your husband went through and burned, as you said through so many bookkeepers. Because there was a part of you that was like looking at, okay we can figure this out. We only need about four hours a week to, or a month to actually be able to pay attention to this. We're smart enough to do these things, but as you grew and scaled, you held onto something that wasn't working for your business, for whatever reason, tied to an emotional trigger that took you a minute to actually release.
[00:12:47] And so had you not been able to actually say, okay, this is not in our wheelhouse and remove your ego and any connection to the pressure of expending, additional resources to get more clear on your numbers. Then you'd be in the same place you were repeating and burning through those bookkeepers yet. So many leaders in a position of growth don't understand how to transition relationships.
[00:13:08] So in our last business, this is one of the areas that I actually measured. I would measure a successful client onboarding by how quickly they stopped calling me and started calling our account executive that was leading. because if I was viewed as the guy or the gal in any situation, always and forever, I can't leverage and scale my time.
[00:13:30] And I can't empower my teams because every time that something happens or they do something, if they're calling me the one who has ultimate accountability, then all I'm doing is undermining my team. I'm not giving them ownership and autonomy for how they can operate. And so for me, it's about understanding and having absolutely clear and defined roles in the eyes of the customers or your vendors that you're interacting with so that there's no confusion and that we set appropriate boundaries.
[00:13:56] Within our own lives and in the situation of the business so that we can mitigate some of the impact of the reactions tied to these emotional triggers, they are real, they do exist. And when you have a business owner operating from a position of scarcity, they're gonna hold onto everything. So tightly that they're gonna totally take the life and breath out of it.
[00:14:14] So those emotions are important, but that's one of the biggest things we do is help people actually unroot and move through those things so that it stops impacting their lives and business.
[00:14:23] Islin Munisteri: That's awesome. And I know you had a framework for helping people move through their emotions when they're
[00:14:30] Brian Bogert: triggered.
[00:14:31] Yeah. Yeah. We developed this a while back and I developed it really because I had a whole lot of emotions that I was unaware of for a very long time that were impacting my life, my business, my closest intimate relationships with my wife and my kids. And so I'll hit on this real quick. I, wanna be clear.
[00:14:46] When I say systems and processes, this is a four step framework just for philosophy and the way that we think through things. But this is not like you follow this step and you will, all of a sudden be here. Every person is different in this environment. Okay. And so I have to start by saying that the very first emotion that I had to unpack that I was unaware of for the better part of a decade in the beginning, part of my career was shame.
[00:15:09] And so shame for me, wasn't easily identified because I believe that shame is the ultimate Wolf in sheeps clothing. It presents itself as perfectionism scarcity control. All of these things worth that we just talked about that are emotions that we experience as business owners, as leaders in businesses.
[00:15:24] And I didn't understand it because I didn't ever see it as the traditional way. I, I always thought shame had just one talk track and Brene brown helped enlighten me because what I believed is that it's, I'm not good. I'm not worthy. I'm not good. I'd be lying. If I told you I never had moments that existed there, but the reality of it is when you shut that down, you show up in the arena and you go to the other side.
[00:15:41] It's who do you think you are? Every time I lived big, every time I did something major, I felt the need to apologize for it to the point that I started pulling the throttle back in my life and it started impacting me. So let me give you a few examples on how this plays out. Shame showed up in my world in a number of different ways.
[00:15:58] It truly impacted my business. It impacted my client relationships. It impacted my philanthropic relationships and it absolutely impacted my personal and home life. But I'll give you a few examples if you haven't figured it out by now, I talk fast and I'm very loud. this is something that's unique to me.
[00:16:14] It's who I am. And it's something that I have been conditioned to believe. Isn't good enough about who I am. And so what would happen is I would show up in a business meeting, I'd talk fast, I'd talk loud because that's who I was. And guess what? My clients never had a problem with it, but always business partners or associates might not know how to handle it.
[00:16:34] So they'd lean over and they sh brian you can't talk that fast. You can't talk that loud. And immediately I'd shrink down. I'd bite my tongue. I'd feel unworthy, not feel like I could do something. How many times do you show up in an environment, whether it be networking or in a business meeting and you don't feel safe, seen, understood, or connected, and all of a sudden your wall starts to go up.
[00:16:52] And part of who you are changes in that environment. That energy impacts the outcome of those interactions because we're walled up in doing that. So shame would impact the outcome of those business. another example of how shame would show up in my world. And I'll use a personal example now because this inside out can apply business or life.
[00:17:09] Shame is again the emotion that we talked about. Now, I would hear my wife ask a question, which would be this simple, Hey babe, what do we do with the kids this weekend? But because being a husband and father is the absolute number. One thing I care about my shame filter used to cause me to hear that as, Hey, you haven't done enough.
[00:17:30] To be a good husband and father in the last few days. So what are you gonna do to make up for it this weekend? Not at all what my wife said, but absolutely what I heard. And so what would happen? My, my shame would cause me to actually get defensive in that moment. My chest would puff up and I would heighten my energy and I would rattle off the 10 things I'd done in the prior few days, just to demonstrate I was a good husband and father.
[00:17:51] not when my wife asked. But that's what I heard because of my emotion and how I was being impacted. And so what I do, I reacted, which caused damage that I then had to curate repair around because I caused her wall to go up. But how often in a business meeting can that happen? Where as a leader, they have a sour morning and someone comes in and they get a reaction because of something that didn't really even matter or was connected to them.
[00:18:12] And all of a sudden there's a ripple effect through their day, through their clients, through their relationships that's why these things are so important. So we have to first become aware of the emotion or emotions that have impacted our life or business shame was something that impacted me for a very long time, but I wasn't aware of it for well over a decade in the professional capacity and how it actually changed, how it would show up as scarcity in certain situations in sales environments, how it would cause me to wanna compress or hold on to certain client relationships.
[00:18:39] When I knew abundantly, there was all these other opportunities that exist. I wasn't aware that shame was causing me to actually play small, not take some of the risks that I would've organically taken, because I didn't want to be under the subject of judgment because that's what I was operating from. I wasn't aware of this for well over a decade.
[00:18:55] And it had a ripple effect in every single area. So the first place we have to become aware of the emotion or emotions that impact us second, we have to own them. We have to take ownership for those emotion or emotions. Most of these things I told you about those couple of different shame examples most of these things we inherit, which means that most of these things were conditioned into our lives long before we were aware of where they came from or what they were.
[00:19:20] And they've just patterned forward for a long time. So are they our fault most of the time, not, but do they become our responsibility once we become aware of them? Absolutely. And it's the same thing for those that we work around our closest associates, our closest clients, if we, as leaders understood their triggers, even though they aren't our fault, can we make them our responsibility and give them a safer, more protected or connected environment so that they can live in exist in it?
[00:19:43] Yes. But ownership is also meaning where we've created damage. We have to create repair. So shame is an area that has created a bunch of damage in my. Once I was aware of it once I started to actually move through it and see where it was, I had to take ownership and I had to go have conversations with people specifically.
[00:20:01] I had to have that conversation with my wife, so that now when she asks that same question, if I feel defensive, I can pause and say, Hey, babe, what? You just did triggered me right there. And I don't think that was consistent with what you said, but that's what I heard. So I'm gonna try to calm my emotions in the moment, but in case I'm not able to, can we table this and come back to it later?
[00:20:18] Imagine if you did that in a business. Imagine, if you could actually own as a leader with your associates that you were triggered in some area ownership allows us to neutralize and diffuse the energy that's connected to the damage we've created around us. The third step is where it gets really challenging, cuz this is where we unroot.
[00:20:35] So I'm gonna ask you a real quick question before I go through this path. Have you ever done any weeding? Have you pulled weeds ever in your life?
[00:20:44] Islin Munisteri: Oh yeah. It's one of the one of the worst experiences on a Houston summer day.
[00:20:48] Brian Bogert: Yeah. Yeah. And so why is that? Why is it one of the worst experiences? Tell me what happens when you go to pull weeds on a summer Houston day.
[00:20:56] Islin Munisteri: I would say the roots, just keep on going. And then they're tangled in with the other roots of other plants that are like, you don't want to kill. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, it's just you just have a mess and then you just kind leave it and then go in, then get lemonade. But ,
[00:21:10] Brian Bogert: And that, that suggests that you're actually trying to pull all the roots out.
[00:21:12] Cause what often happens in hard ground, we live in Phoenix's the same thing. Right? You go to pull the, the weed and the top just pops. The weed, the top using that hard cemented ground. You keep on
[00:21:22] Islin Munisteri: watering it and then just keep, and then it just grows like totally a couple days later and you're like, oh, I didn't
[00:21:27] Brian Bogert: do anything.
[00:21:28] Totally. And for those that operate primarily with areas of lawn, I know we've got those in Arizona, too. I know my, for myself. So often in the old days, I'd see a weed in there. I'm like, oh, it's green. If I just mow over it, it'll blend into the lawn. But here's the thing weed. Say that again? You just chop up
[00:21:42] Islin Munisteri: the weed and then there's like little weed seedlings all over
[00:21:45] Brian Bogert: your world.
[00:21:45] That's right. That's right. But here's the thing too, is if we mow over it, it continues to grow. Our emotions are no different, but the world has taught us to literally just shove stuff down, chop it off on the top, show up with a smile on, make sure that we go into business emotions can't affect that.
[00:22:00] And so the reality of it is we just show up and we're so conditioned to just pull the top of the weed off and not actually get down to the bottom of the. If we don't actually effectively unroot meaning get to the root or root source or source of these emotions, we will not be able to move through them.
[00:22:14] And so for me, I have a handful of roots connected to my shame. They're mine. I don't, I'm not, I don't plan to share them, but I will tell you that most of them existed before I was age 10. I had to do the work, not to just sit there and understand why, but understand the lessons I could extract from those situations.
[00:22:29] So I could become intentional with how do I apply them in my life moving forward, because if, once I unroot. What happens when you actually get that root out, if you get lucky enough where it's not intertwined with other roots and other things, what happens once the roots pulled out, it's gone.
[00:22:41] And typically there's a hole, right? Yeah. I know for me in Arizona, the only way I got those roots out in the hard ground is if I jammed that screwdriver into the ground, spun it all the way around that root so that I could actually break the ground up enough to get the root soft so I could pull it out now in the ground.
[00:22:56] That's not always a good thing, but in our lives, that's beautiful because if you pull the root out and you now have an empty hole, It's something that you get to fill with new patterns, new beliefs, new operating systems, so that you no longer have to be reacting and having these emotions control you.
[00:23:10] The last step is move. Move is really important, cuz this is how does the emotion move through you? How does it move through your world and how do you move through it? So I told you about shame and two different ways that it moves through me I shrink down in one case causing myself to feel small.
[00:23:25] I puff up in another case causing myself to feel defensive I've got a client who suffers from anxiety and she struggles with anxiety. She's oh, I know all my anxiety tells. Cool. All right. Do they look the same in every situation? Yeah. So we start breaking it down and having a conversation.
[00:23:39] And what we find out is that anxiety shows up totally different with her husband than it does with her boss. And it does with her friends. And it does when she's actually got her own self level of anxiety, she thought that it all showed up the same, but each situation made anxiety move through her body differently.
[00:23:52] So until we start to identify how the emotion moves in certain situations, how it moves through our body, we can't tie it to how it moves through our world. I have about six different ways that shame moves through my body. But I have about 60 different ways. It moves through my world that I'm aware of now, how does it move through a world?
[00:24:08] It's the things that trigger us, right? So for me, it might be getting challenged in something that I take a lot of pride in, or I feel like I know it might be someone telling me to hush, right? I'm giving a few different examples. It might be challenging, a thought process, or my shame lens might hear cause me to hear something that's not accurate.
[00:24:25] So once I can understand how shame moves in my body and how it moves through my world, then I can start patterning those things together. Because it's in those moments that we start to gain back control to move through it. It's in those moments that we can pause and ask ourselves of what I'm reacting to in this moment specific and connected to this moment, or is there how my grandpa looked at me when I was four it's in those moments that we can take a breath and establish new patterns to break the pattern of damage that we were creating.
[00:24:52] See, here's the thing I believe. Emotional triggers will either pull us, causing us to react and cause damage. Or we can pull the trigger on our emotional triggers causing us to respond, eliminating any need to create repair.
[00:25:05] Islin Munisteri: That's a great choice. Yeah. believe that there's quite a bit like once you're aware of the trigger, right?
[00:25:12] There's a bit of choice in how you respond to it. Do you choose to do something about it? And that means going to therapy or a coach or spiritual mentor or whoever you. You need to go to about these things or do you let it continue affecting your life in the same patterns?
[00:25:27] Brian Bogert: But these affect businesses and teams and cultures and client relationships at such a deep level.
[00:25:34] But again, our world has told us to shut it off, cut it off and show up in every scenario with a smile on I'm here to tell you it's not a way that we're gonna protect and connect. And that's not a way that we can put people before process.
[00:25:47] Islin Munisteri: That is true. And I guess can talk to me more about what you mean by protect and connect
[00:25:52] Brian Bogert: On teams?
[00:25:52] Yeah. Yes, I will. And I'll give I'll go down a little bit of a rabbit hole on this one, but I won't be as long as the last rabbit hole, I promise. I'm a big believer that in the human experience, we all seek and desire four things. I think we all seek and desire to feel. We all seek and desire to feel protected.
[00:26:06] Those are not the same thing. By the way, we all seek and desire to feel seen and understood, and we all seek and desire to feel connected. Now, I think the two that we desire the most are those last two to be seen and understood and connected, but they don't happen unless the first two do. So what happens when we walk into a room, and we don't feel safe. What's the first thing we do. We protect ourselves. Yeah. It's natural evolutionary response. If we don't feel seen and understood. If we feel like the only one in a room, if we feel like eyes are looking at us and we aren't totally centered and secure in who we are, we tend to protect ourselves.
[00:26:36] And our armor goes up directly preventing the thing that we seek and desire the most, which is to be seen and understood and connected armor does three things. Okay. When we put this invisible armor around to protect ourselves, it's truly that we can't properly demonstrate who we are. Through that invisible force field, nor can we allow others to see us or understand us or connect with us if we have an invisible force field around us.
[00:27:00] So it directly prevents us from being able to be seen, understood, and connect. What it also does is I'm just curious if I were to hand you two, two pound dumbbells and you were to hold them in front of you. How long could you hold them there?
[00:27:16] Islin Munisteri: Oh, Five five minutes, five minutes.
[00:27:20] Brian Bogert: Very long. If you could do five minutes, you'd probably beat me, but let's walk through that.
[00:27:25] So I'd hand them to you and you'd be like, oh, I can do this. And you start out feeling relatively strong, knowing that it's gonna get heavy. Probably how long before you feel it.
[00:27:32] Islin Munisteri: Probably within 30 seconds to a
[00:27:34] Brian Bogert: minute. I'm sure. Yeah. Like probably 15 seconds, 30 seconds. It's you're starting to, all of a sudden your muscles are on fire.
[00:27:41] Now. Let's say a minute in and two minutes in what's actually happening. Is it getting hard yet?
[00:27:45] Islin Munisteri: It's getting hard. Your hands, like your arms are shaking.
[00:27:49] Brian Bogert: Yeah. It gets heavier. The longer you hold it there. Guess what? Our armor is no different. We put up our armor thinking it's protecting. But what it's actually doing is incrementally crushing us over time because it gets heavier the longer we carry it.
[00:28:04] Lastly, armor also is this container that's around us. So whether we are really tightly controlled and we put a lid on it to really contain it, or we're just a little loosey goosey, the reality of it is this container is designed to hold all these emotions that the world has told us not to feel or. It's kinda like a trash can when we're too lazy to take it out to the dumpster in the front of the house, what do we do?
[00:28:25] We shove it down in the trash can and we just push it down so that we create more room. But at some point we can only push that trash so far down before it starts coming and over overloading or the lid won't close again, our emotions are no different. We've been taught to cut it off the top of the container, put a smile on, show up with a smile on.
[00:28:43] And so one or two things will happen if we don't have a lid on it, we're gonna hold so much. But then it's gonna start spilling over and it's gonna start impacting those people around. Because our emotions and the way we show up in our emotional triggers will literally demonstrate that in those environments.
[00:28:56] The second thing is if we have a lid, we're so tightly controlled, we can't let anybody see that any of this spill over, then we're gonna hold it in there. And every time we push something down, the pressure inside the container builds until all of a sudden it's gonna explode and create damage all around us.
[00:29:09] The reality of it is our armor actually is preventing us from having what we want, but it's also creating almost amount of damage. And so when I say protect and connect, if we as leaders in life, In families and in business can walk into in to an environment, knowing who we are centered in who we are and clear on those things.
[00:29:26] And we can convince ourselves that we are safe, then we ourselves can lower our armor. And when we lower our armor, what we can do is we can wrap it all the way around the environment that we're in, so that we are actually making sure that we're protecting everyone in it, including ourselves, which ensures that everybody's.
[00:29:43] Everybody's protected. Everybody's seen understood, and everybody's connected. So when I say the protector and connector, I think it's up to us as leaders to create the safe environments that are protected for individuals to lean into who they are, so that we can get the best out of them in the areas that only they can perform and deliver on certain things.
[00:30:02] So this building a business, building rev ops building systems, building all these things. If we don't deeply understand the human experience. We are gonna be limited in our ability to develop cultures and connect with our clients to grow our businesses. Wow.
[00:30:16] Islin Munisteri: It's nice to know all that work that we did with our therapist really in growing our business.
[00:30:22] Yeah, that I agree with you. I'm still like, even today, right? I'm still working through a lot of my triggers. I feel like it's a. I know at some point it'll be less intense and it'll, there won't be as many triggers. But like one of the things that really trigger me is feedback I'm trying.
[00:30:38] Yeah. And that might be connected to shame or self hatred or, yeah. Something much deeper, but yeah like the surface level I, I'm not responding well to feedback. And then I have to. Dig
[00:30:48] Brian Bogert: deeper, no figure. And that is one of the things that we enjoy doing most is actually helping help individuals unroot in areas that they've repeated the same patterns, even gone to therapy on in the past and not been able to understand what to do with it, because just to your point, exactly, I deal what triggers every single day.
[00:31:04] There is no final destination, only constant evolution itself. And most of these emotions like shame, fear, anger, and by the way, anger and fear often either fabricated or a secondary emotion. So it's important to pay attention to that. All of these truly all of these emotions that are actually developed and grown in the way that we develop as people they're real and they keep us stuck and they keep us circling those same drains.
[00:31:30] And we don't actually put ourselves in a position to actually get out of them.
[00:31:33] Islin Munisteri: Yes, I can. I can see that unfortunately, in family members and. Other people
[00:31:39] Brian Bogert: I know, and there'll be adversaries in constant pursuit until the day we die. To be perfectly honest, all we can do is be vigilant in our efforts to see them be aware of them, own them, unroot them and move through them because to your point, exactly, you get triggered less and less as you continue to move through it.
[00:31:53] But here's the thing. What I know shame will never go away in my world. It will always show up in some way. And it's just gonna be a reminder for me to continue to focus on what's.
[00:32:03] Islin Munisteri: exactly. And that's, I think that's something that I've learned on my journey, like with mental health and growth and learning how to perform better is just, it never, the journey never really ends.
[00:32:16] I wish I could say it I guess it ends when you've transcended all your problems and all your triggers. But I don't think I'll get
[00:32:22] Brian Bogert: I don't think life works that way. Unfortunately. I think we just continue to go through deeper levels of understanding.
[00:32:27] Islin Munisteri: Exactly. It was awesome having you on the show, Brian, and you can find him at brianbgert.com and we'll also link to his LinkedIn profile.
[00:32:39] Brian Bogert: Thanks, Brian. Thank you.
[00:32:42]
