[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Welcome to Battle Ready. I'm Ricky Chavez and this is where we talk about what it really takes to lead when life gets hard, when pressure rises, and when excuses stop working. Today I'm joined by Ryan Kahn, a leader whose philosophy is rooted in action, discipline and what happens when pressure exposes but training alone can't. You know, the conversation is not about looking prepared, it's about being prepared. It's the difference between having credentials and having the courage, instinct and standards to respond when everything is online. Ryan, I'm glad you're here.
You're muted.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: Ryan, thank you for having me. It's an absolute pleasure. Working man.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Great. So I'm going to open by establishing the core battle line of this episode. There's a massive difference between being trained and being ready. I position Ryan as someone who has lived the distinction in real time. I move quickly into an idea. Ryan, tell me what was one of the most craziest experience that you know, you trained for, Train for, train for, but you didn't realize that you were ready till it actually was on the line?
[00:01:20] Speaker A: That's, that's a good question. I've had several dynamic things happen in my life now. Maybe start with a law enforcement, a SWAT story and then maybe pivot to a personal. Personal story, sure.
One of the SWAT stories that I had is I had been on the team for a couple of years.
I over did over a decade overall. But in the first probably two or three years we had an extremely high risk one on a very well known violent felon. And so we timed out the mission and we ultimately ended up finding that breaching the front door is going to be the best option on this one. We breached the front door in the early twilight hours, 5, 5:30, which is hopefully when they're lulled to sleep and we can get that element of surprise when doing that. We went through the front door. I was third man in the stack. If you know anything about tactical entries, it's a very important role. And as we, as we go into the, the room, walking down the hallway into the kitchen was a mother with two young children.
And we prepare for things like that, but that has never crossed paths with me in my tactical world. And they are absolutely terrified, as you can imagine. And I think one of them was like three years old, the other was maybe four or five years old. And so we have our tactical assignments. Of course you pivot with whatever's going on in the ele.
But I was not necessarily prepared to just see small children.
Not exactly, but basically at the End of my barrel. You know, you're going at the low red and you're not actually pointing guns at people. But so what I did in that moment with all of my armor, all of my gear and stuff like that, I grabbed a hold of them and almost like, you know, a mother hen shelters their, their baby chicks in a storm. And I brought them back side of the couch and said, hey, sit here with me. Let's hang out for a minute. Everything's gonna pay. Hey, what's your name, sweetheart? Hey mama, what's, what's this names here? And I started talking with them and making jokes and getting the kids to giggle and la half while in the background dorms were getting, doors were getting kicked in, you know, not, not necessarily everything getting put in handcuffs and they were looking at my face, trying to be the face of calm. And I having young children myself at the time, I just went into dad mode. And there's not a training that says shelter this family with your body in case things go sideways, go into dad mode and talk to them like you would talk to your own children. And that's, that's not something that law enforcement has any training for at all. But I was prepar from the culmination of life experience, the sympathies that it is being a father and seeing a terrified child. And at the end of it, we always keep stuffed animals in our car. So I gave stuffed animals to each of the kids. They laughed, they hugged me, and we took the very dangerous and violent father for prison for. I think he ended up getting 20 plus years.
[00:03:52] Speaker B: Wow. You know, just you saying the fact that the SWAT team carries stuffed animals, that's an interesting concept for sure.
Yeah, that's an interesting concept.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: There's, there's a lot of dynamics to law enforcement. People don't know or even care to know or recognize.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know what? Hey, I'm gonna say this. I don't care. You know, nobody likes them until they need them.
[00:04:17] Speaker A: Right? That's right.
That's right.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: It's like I hear things like that all the time.
My son in law was, my former son in law was, is a HPD here in Houston.
My, my sons are all in the military, you know, and, and it's, you know, you're the bad guys. You know, it's one guy does something wrong, then everybody's wrong.
You know what I mean? So it's like, I totally understand, I understand that point. Was there a moment early in your career when you realized credentials alone were not going to carry you through real pressure?
[00:04:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, there, there's a lot, you know, a lot of them are around just, you know, not being able to check the boxes, get just the facts, ma', am, write a good report, decide that a crime has been committed or not committed, follow up, testify in court.
A lot of credentials also serve and probably one of my biggest failures is where my credentials I thought mattered. My first time going for sergeant when I, when I wanted to be promoted to sergeant, I was about a six or seven year officer and that usually that five to seven year mark is where people put in and usually get promoted to sergeant in our agency. And so I had the cv, I had the resume, my credentials were better than the rest of the people in the sergeant pool. There was one other person that was basically equal to me and we were healthy rivals with each other. We were friends, we were rivals, but my credentials were substantial.
My test scores, I did the top testing in the dynamic testing, I did second in the written testing and my credentials were arguably the best. And they were hiring three people for sergeant and I didn't get it. And, and I just sat here and scratched my head and was like, why? I mean, on paper I'm the candidate, right? And one of the, you know, so then you have an exit, a debrief with the hiring process and, and I said, you know, what's going on here? And they say, hey, we want you to take on another leadership role. We want you to demonstrate your leadership. You know, you do a lot of teaching and instructing for us, but you haven't done anything but the single role. So I ended up moving into detectives. I ended four and a half year in detectives or was actually promoted while I was in detectives, which is, which is a little unusual, and then came back to detectives and that served my career very well. They said you have a type of experience which is largely tactical and people oriented, stuff like that, but we need you to have a little bit more depth. And, and my credentials didn't serve that on paper and it was a experience issue that they were looking for and I ended up getting the role later on. And I thought I did a halfway decent job being a sergeant based on their tweaking of my, my needs.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: You know, it's interesting you said that, right? So in reality in today's world, there's a lot of individual contributors, which is where you were in your tactile role, right? You, and you contributed to the team. You did really well.
But, but then when, when it was a leadership role that there's a Lot of individual contributors that move get moved into leadership roles and have never led or had experience with leading. And it kind of sets them up for failure in their mind, they don't get it.
But in the real world, I mean, I definitely understand it.
I did really well in military recruiting.
I was a top recruiter in a whole area, the whole nine yards. I get moved to an office and my leadership skills were.
I mean, I couldn't understand why they didn't want to do what I did to get where I was at.
And I mean, I almost lost my career over it, to be brutally honest. You know, it's. It's a scary thought. I remember I still talk to this guy, guys in, in Georgia now, and I literally grabbed one of my soldiers by the neck and put him up against the wall because he, because of something, you know, and, and because he was just not excelling. He wasn't doing his job. And, you know, I didn't understand it. And I was just a knucklehead back then. I mean, I would get thrown out of the army now. I was very lucky. It's all about leadership. My leader came down and the one thing he said to me that just resonates to this day, he said, rick, you have to remember they're not you.
How do you feel about that statement?
[00:08:38] Speaker A: So I love that a lot. One, so I was in charge of the police training officer program. So that's the people that take a recruit in their car and teach them how to be a good copy for real on the streets. You know, you get out of the academy, you get out of the, the theory, and you get into the practice. And so I ended up being a police training officer and a police training supervisor. One of the things I told them, one of the biggest errors you're going to do is try to make them a mini me, a miniature version of you. And you have to let them be themselves. They're going to learn in their own ways. You have to identify the way and they learn. It's not the way you learn. And you may catch on to something real quick and they may not. And they may catch on to something that you don't real quick. And you need to grow those areas and strengthen them. But that's definitely a deficit area where to train and say, I want you to be a mini me. You need to do it just like me. Walk like me, talk like me, act like me, investigate like me. And there's people that have their own vein, their own theme to their personality, and it gets the job Done just as well, sometimes better. And you got to admit that too. But is your job to make them the best recruit and ultimately officer possible? And if they do not pass snuff, that is actually a reflection of you as the trainer, you as the leader. If they can't figure this out, it's you, the leader's fault, them, the recruit's fault. And of course there's some knuckleheads that just can't make it, but 19 out of 20 times, it's going to be you, the leader, the instructor, the mentor, not a problem with the recruit.
[00:10:00] Speaker B: You know, and that's, that's a very good point. You know, people like to point the finger at others for, for their failures, right?
[00:10:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Especially in western culture. Big time. Yeah.
[00:10:11] Speaker B: You know, but no, it's, it's, it's so, it's so interesting, you know, that there's such parallels between your leadership journey and even my leadership journey from being an individual contributor to being a leader. And, you know, that's the one thing out in the civilian world that they, they don't do a good job of training people to lead or take their job because they're scared. What do you think? What do you, how you feel about that?
[00:10:38] Speaker A: No, I agree. So in, in our companies that I've worked with in the past, and I just recently exited one of the companies and I'm still in working in two of the companies, the, the big thing is management. I try to teach people the difference between leadership and management. And generally in what I consider the more sterile business world, we focused historically on management management, be a good manager, learn these management skills, manage these tasks, manage these people. So stop lead these people. I said a computer, a software program, and definitely an AI now can manage okay, you, you don't need to manage that. That is a skill you need to lead. And those are skills as well. I said, but you have to develop and be thinking about this a completely different way. You have to care for people. You have to have your head on a swivel, looking for new and different things. Just because you were the best at what you did and then you got put into this role does not make you a leader. And that's the problem we usually identify you. You were talking about this earlier. Somebody that's great at what they do well, then you're the next leader. But they don't have leadership skill, leadership core that has to be learned and developed as well. And you probably just took your best performer and made them much less efficient because now they're Managing and partially performing instead of just killing it in the sit in the spot where they were. And what you need is you need to rise up a leader.
[00:11:54] Speaker B: You know, it's interesting when you say that I can remember having leaders that, you know, when I was an individual contributor and, and basically one told me the hardest leadership challenge is not leading others, it's leading yourself.
What's your thoughts on that?
[00:12:12] Speaker A: I think that I'm. Amen, brother. That's, that's it right there. Self discipline, you know, the ability to control yourself, to keep yourself pushing forward, to walk the walk, talk the talk. You know, you have Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore during the, the great Vietnam conflict. Early on, he's the first person, battlefield, last person to take his foot off the battlefield. And you know, that that's an important thing that resonated with me as a young man saying, man, I got to get in here. If I'm going to drive change, I have to come in here and I have to example that change first. And that takes a lot of discipline. And other people, they won't just magically become disciplined because you're a good role model, but you can at least speak from experience and speak from example to drive and pull, drive forward and pull them up.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: You know, this is an amazing leadership conversation. What I love about the conversation is that it forces me to confront a hard truth. Pressure does not create character out of nowhere. It reveals, you know, what I've been building all along. So we'll be right back with Ryan and we'll talk some more about his leadership, his unique style and how he manages under pressure. Be right back.
No, it's, it's, you know, I love these leadership.
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now I'm back with Ryan Khan. Ryan, welcome back.
[00:13:54] Speaker A: Glad to be back.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: And in this conversation, we're going to talk a little bit about what we're talking about in the break. And that's the leadership. Right?
I think I said to you during the break, you know, in, in my leadership experience, I think that in some cases I've learned more from some of my failures than all my successes. And you said you wanted to share a story. Come on, talk to me.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: So I love that. So we had a phrase that we ended up developing is called fail forward. And it's trying to teach you to stop failing with fear. You know, so many people are afraid and so they're like, well, what if I screw up? What if I fail? My good, go screw up. That's the imprinting lessons that you're going to carry with you the rest of your life. If you go out and win, all you did is a little bit of confirmation, right? If you go out and have success, you don't have struggles, you don't have issues, you're just confirming little by little and you're getting there's value to that because the work paid off. And a lot of things probably had to connect in order to get you in. But it's those moments where you fail where it makes an imprint. So one of the hardest things that we, I've done in business with people that I'm training, even high level executive leaders, all the way down to the brand new staff member that, that we're, that we're doing through the actual onboarding training program, is fail forward. And we discuss this with them within the first four hours of them joining a team or coming onto a workforce or whatever it is.
And when you fail, you are going to debrief yourself or an accountability partner and you say, okay, in the scenario I didn't get the results I wanted, however, first question, what went well? And you write that down. You write down what went well? Question number two, what didn't go well? Or what needs to change to make this successful in the future?
And you write those things down. And then question number three, how do the answers to number one and number two apply to similar or even different scenarios in the future? So here's my wisdom component. How do I just not put this in a silo, but how do I take the lessons and broaden them into the rest of my life? If you can just take 15 minutes and sit down with your team or accountability partner and diagnose your failures, you're going to literally expand and explode your learning, your growth and the imprinting of your knowledge. That's, that's, that's what's part of what's called adult facilitated learning.
So that is a huge thing that people can do. And I encourage people to go failure. Now again, you have to avoid the critical failure. So in law enforcement, you're training somebody, you can't let them use inappropriate force or violate somebody's rights or something like that. You have to jump in and stop that. But if they're working a theft or burglary investigation, they forget to get the victim's phone number to call them back for additional questions. You let them drive away. They get to the part on the report and they can't proceed without a phone number. Guess what they got to do. They gotta drive back or have dispatch call them or do whatever and get that victim phone number. And guess what they'll never forget again? The victim phone number. Same in the business world. If it's not going to cost you a client, if it's not going to put you in some type of civil litigation scenario, let the person make the failure. Don't be the easy button that says, oh, you forgot to do A, B and C. It doesn't imprint. Let them fail. Put the red X on it. Teach them where to find the answer, send them back. They make the correction. They say, man, I never want to do that again.
And they just imprinted the learning and they don't make that mistake again. Fail forward.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: You know, some I, you know, I had one of my, one of my guests in, in one of the other shows basically said, if, if you're not failing, you're not trying.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: You can't, you can't do good if you don't try. And you, you, you can't be, you have to be ready to fail if you try. Right. And you know, these questions that you asked, is it. I felt like I was having a, A, aha moment from back when I was a trainer in the military, because early on I would, I would go out with, with one of my soldiers and it'd be like, this is what you did wrong. This, this, this and the questioning that you did. When I learned those questions, it changed the dynamics of our conversations. What did you do well? What did you do not so well. And then we followed it with, you know, how, what could you do better?
And the next one was how, what do you want to put in place to make you better? And typically after those four questions, the next question would always that person say, well, how do you feel I did? Which opens the door for you to share feedback. What do you think of that?
[00:18:10] Speaker A: No, I think that the feedback is huge. And so I have something called approachable and coachable. It's a, it's something that I get a commitment from everybody that I do. So some of the consultation that I do is for leaders, owners of businesses. And it's, you know, I always tell them, I said, one of the first things I'm going to do is when I get there for the two, three day workshop that we're doing my first two to three hours with you. And I need a commitment before I take your money. I will not take your money no matter how much you throw at me. If you will not agree degree to be approachable and coachable, which means I need to come to you and say, hey, Johnny, I want to talk about these three things that, that came up in the reports or the, the writings or the training today.
And I want to coach you on it, right? So if you get, let's say you're coaching an athlete, you ever been a soccer dad or something like that? I have a whole wrestling team. And you say, hey, by the way, you're doing this technique wrong. If you'll just slide your hand down to the wrist, you'll get more torque and you'll be able to, you know, get the move that you want. And they go, yeah, I know, coach, Yeah, I know, I know. Are they approachable or coachable or not? Oh yeah, I know. Well, if you know, you should have been doing it. Same in business, same in life, same with your kids. So you have to get a commitment from someone first. Yes, I commit to be approachable and coachable. Then you get one of those moments of like, well, I don't want to hear this. It's, it's my subordinates fault or somebody's fault. Like, hey, timeout. Did not. Yesterday when we started, you promised to be approachable and coachable. This is one of those moments. And they're like, oh, okay, what do you have to tell me? I was like, no, I'm going to say this in a way that you can, but I'm not here to pick on you. I'm not here to micromanage you. But if you want success like you asked me for, to help you with, here's the two things you need to work on. Boom. And that's inside you need to work on. And then you'll get the results externally from the other people.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: You know, you said two points here that really kind of resonate with me. And that's the big one was, yeah, I know. You know, I have a team of realtors here in the Houston area now, you know, and I talk to them all the time. And one of the things I challenge them to do is not reply to somebody or cut somebody off with saying, yes, I know.
And the reason I say that you, you're 100, right? If you know, you would be doing it right. But, but the reality is this, and you said this earlier on our last segment, is you can learn from the Beginner and most experience and anybody in between.
So when you shut somebody down, you have just, in my opinion, lost an opportunity to grow.
[00:20:27] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: You know, because then they can say something or a way of doing something like, wow, I never even thought of that. All because you said, you know, you. How do you feel about that?
[00:20:39] Speaker A: I think that's. That's another thing. So the growth mindset. So I have something called the five M's that I work with, and the first M is mindset, right? And we diagnose what is, what is a proper, appropriate, healthy mindset. And it's all based on a growth mindset. So one of the things I do is I want to serve people. I want to help people, want to lift them up. Also, they can be a better version of themselves. And it's, you know, there's. It's okay to be satisfied with who you are. Right. But you don't want to be so satisfied, you become complacent and stop improving. Right. So you can. You can sit down and enjoy the moment, but let's get back up and get to the next workout, get to the next sale, get to the next relationship builder with our family. And, you know, that that's. That's an important part, is you need to get that growth mindset. And then again, I love reconfirming with people in those moments. I'm human. I don't want to be lectured at some point in my life. I don't want to have my flaw or failure pointed out. So, yes, I can also sit here and be like, ye want to hear about it? I was like, wait, time out. You promised that you had a growth mindset. You promised to be approachable. Then here's an opportunity for. For us to talk about what happened and grow and. And do that. And I was like, all right, give me my own medicine. Let's go. Yeah, there you go.
[00:21:43] Speaker B: So, Ryan, if somebody wanted to continue this conversation, reach out to you, get to know you, how would they do that?
[00:21:48] Speaker A: Yeah. So, like literally the yesterday before we started the show, my website, revamping it, but my website, CS Bizcon.com is a good one. But this one right here, Five Talents Strategic Financ, my newest company, I'm leveraging, putting most of my energy behind. It's the number five, five talentssf.com and that's the one where we do some leadership and stuff right there. But we're really helping and serve businesses grow. And of course, my LinkedIn profile. Ryan Khan on LinkedIn. You can find me it's got my company names in the banners and there's a lot of connections in there. Shoot me a message on the website and book a meeting or shoot me a message on LinkedIn and I monitor that stuff all the time and you'll get a quick response out of me.
[00:22:26] Speaker B: You also host a show here on NOW Media, right?
[00:22:29] Speaker A: That's right. I'm also a host of the show Pivotal Change. It's a, it's another kind of leadership and business growth TV show, you know, similar to yours. But we, we, we get, we get down in the weeds on some different topics. But it's very like minded. You and I are very like minded.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we are like minded and I think one of the, one of the advantages of of NOW Media and the different hosts and different shows where mine is more about the journey, it's not about coaching, it's not about anything. Yours is about helping them get to the next.
More about introducing people on their journeys and what has happened and, and how to the fact that we can make some pivots and still get to where we want to be, you know, and, and yours is once you get to where you want to be, how do you get to the next level? Right?
[00:23:13] Speaker A: Very much so. Very much. Like what are the tips and tricks and the strategies or the person that can, oh, I can go home, I just wrote down a note and I can go home and apply that with my people and get to the next level. You're exactly right.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: So why do you believe avoidance is so expensive in leadership and business growth?
[00:23:27] Speaker A: Oh man. I'd say avoidance is probably one of the most expensive, if not the, the most expensive habit that people get into.
So a really good thing is Jocko Willink is probably the person I would lean on to is emphasizing this the most, which is if it's something that you're afraid of doing, you're avoiding doing or just I don't want to do that. He says you better write that down. That is the exact thing you need to be doing right now. The thing you are avoiding is the thing you must overcome and conquer to personal growth, relationship growth, business growth. And avoidance gets you in all kinds of trap. It gets you into the, you know, the okay, I've procrastinated long enough. I have to now hustle and get this done and I'm probably going to produce sloppy work, miss the deadline, I'm putting pressure on other people that I'm delegating tasks to all because of my avoidance. And if you ultimately avoid it, things Fester. Anything that would be toxic or negative ultimately festers and grows with time. When it's unspoken, most people are like, if I don't address it, it'll just go away. No, it'll just grow and get nasty and turn into a beast that you have to conquer now instead of that little molehill that you should have just stepped over in the first place.
[00:24:33] Speaker B: And avoidance is a horrible thing, right? Because it's always going to be out there. Right?
[00:24:37] Speaker A: It's always going to be there. It's not going away.
[00:24:40] Speaker B: What's the book out there? I think it's Eat that Frog or man, it's so bad, I can't think
[00:24:45] Speaker A: of the name of it.
Wrong. How to Eat the Frog or Eat the Frog. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:24:49] Speaker B: Right, right. So it's always. It says, do the thing you avoid the most right up front and get it over with. Once you get that done, everything else should be easier kind of thing.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: It's exactly right. That's exactly right.
[00:24:59] Speaker B: All right, guys, we'll be right back with Ryan and the third segment and talking about leadership and. And some of the ideas of what to do. We'll talk to you soon.
I'm here with Ryan Kahn. And one of the most powerful ideas in the conversation is that information alone does not build leadership. At some point, you have to stop collecting everybody else's quotes, everybody else's framework, and everybody else's strategies and start building a leadership system that actually reflects your standards, your decision, and your responsibility. But before we go into that, you know, Ryan and I were kind of kicking around the book, and we want to pull it up here. It's called Eat that Frog by Brian Tracy. It's about doing the thing you like the least first. You know what I mean? Get it over with so the rest of things become more manageable during the day. All right, don't now plug that in. So I make sure we know that we're on the right pace. But now we talk a little bit about situational awareness. You know, Ryan, give me some thoughts on situational awareness.
[00:26:05] Speaker A: Yeah, I think situational awareness is really not just in law enforcement, military. Situational awareness about ways to stay safe, pick up threats and identify things and keep yourself or maybe your unit it safe. But situational awareness in the business world is the same thing. What threats are coming into your company, things like that. But it's also, are you paying attention to your surroundings? Are your people in danger because there's something going on at home? Are you paying attention to their work slacking or they're coming in late because their dog died, and all you have to do is ask a question and let them tell their story about their dog and they can get on with their day. Situational awareness also definitely lets you pick up things that are unexpected that you don't think about in life, whether that be in business or family relationships. You could be on vacation, you know, you could sit here and say that, whoa, I wasn't expecting this, or my situational awareness. I hear one of my clients mention a detail in a conversation and I go do the research and realize that this is going to have a wave effect in our, our business, our industry, and we can pick up on that. Or am I just complacent, scrolling through my phone, checking off my tasks on my computer screen and going home? And that situational awareness can save you in a lot of different circumstances.
[00:27:15] Speaker B: Have a description about maybe back when you're in law enforcement, one of the other things you did where it meant a lot, it made the difference.
[00:27:22] Speaker A: Sure. I'll. I'll tell you what, I'll start off one where it made a difference in, in real life, and then I say real life. Law enforcement is real life, but my personal life and then enforcement. So a lot of cops, especially before they learn to, they have a light switch, they come home, they're in cop mode, they're in Superman mode, they're in their uniform, they're out there, head on a swivel, picking up the threats, dealing with bad guys all day, answering calls, serving the public. Then they go home, they turn off a switch, they go to Walmart, and they're not thinking about necessarily any threats. And you develop over your career to stay head on a swivel all the time. So I was on a beach vacation with my family one time, and we're on, we had a vrbo. So it wasn't like a public beach with these lifeguard towers. And so we looked down, it's a moderately big beach. And I'm sitting here doing my thing, sitting in the shade, watching the kids build sandcastles. And all of a sudden I see this, this girl, this young girl. I think she's about 10 or 11 years old. And I was like, man, that girl's farther out than everybody. Like, that's. I don't know if that's safe. Where are her parents? And all of a sudden I see her head go under. And I was like, oh, is she, you know, doing that? And I'm constantly scanning the beach as a parent watching my kids. I'm looking for who knows, maybe there's a drunk dad getting in the fight down the way and I just need to keep clear of that. And I watch this kid go under a second time, a third time. Then they started throwing their hands in the air and I was like, oh my gosh, this kid's in trouble. Nobody's watching, nobody's watching. And I literally go into, you know, David Hasselhoff mode. And I go jump into the water. And by the time I got to her, her, she was about a hundred yards from shore. She was completely caught in the rip current. And, you know, just being sensitive to the world that we live in. I swim up to her and I look at her and her eyes are as big as saucers, right? Because I'm yelling and you can't hear in the waves.
And I'm like, are you okay? Do you need help? And she goes under like right before I get to her. And she's like, just nodding, she can't even talk and she's spitting up water. So I scoop up underneath her armpit and I swam one handed back to shore, kind of diagonal against, you know, kind of with this, this rip current how you're supposed to. And, and we were deep. I don't know how deep we are. I'm saying 10 or 12ft deep. Like this girl was, she was gone, she was going to die. And, and I get her to the shore and about knee deep, waist deep, the mom frantically runs up. Oh, little Susie. Oh my gosh, I can't. Just takes the girl and runs her up the beach. She's just coughing and hacking up and the dad's just looking at me. And I would put him in the definition of stereotypical dad. Like, if you're just going to pull up, what does a dad look like in the dictionary? This, this is just average dad. And he just looks at me, looks me, looks me down and go with his jaw open and then walks back to go talk with his family.
I had seen him before because I didn't know who the parents were until I saw them help pull their daughter up out of those last few feet of the ocean. And he was sitting there scrolling on his phone and the mom had a hat pulled over her face and was tanning on the beach and they were listening to music, completely oblivious of their surrounding. And they would have never seen their daughter again again unless somebody was situational awareness. Awareness was watching the ocean. And the funny part was, you know, somebody. As we're walking away, one of the onlookers, because there was another Older gentleman that came out and tried to help. And he was, I think in the 70s, you know, so he wasn't swimming out and doing that, but walking away. Somebody said, those parents didn't even say thank you. And I was like, I don't have to say thank you. I didn't do it for this. Thank you. You know, you don't have situational awareness for a thank you. You do it to protect others, ultimately protect yourself, allow you to protect others, and you do it for those things. And so if you don't have sit awareness, you may not be in a situation where a young child dies, but you may be in a situation where you lose that most valued employee. You may be in a situation where, I mean, you get T boned by a car because you're answering a text message. And you may be in situational awareness where you never see the market conditions changing. You never see the policy manual that changes and ultimately causes you to lose your job. You may never see the AI get adopted that replaces you as a worker so you don't go learn new skills to make yourself current and valuable. So situational awareness is paramount for every person.
[00:31:09] Speaker B: You know, when I was a director of HR for a while and in corporate America and I can remember doing my classes on hostile work environment, sexual ass and things like that, and you know, some of the investigations I did throughout my career, I. One of the things that I equated, situational awareness was how you treated people.
Right. Because you don't know what happened to them before they took the right or the left into the parking lot.
[00:31:36] Speaker A: Lot.
[00:31:37] Speaker B: Right. Goes back to what you said and, and today in a statement that wouldn't bother somebody in the way you deliver it, and tomorrow you delivered the same way, but somebody just flipped them off at the red light or whatever and now becomes pretty aggressive. You know, in my mind, that's also situational awareness. And what are your thoughts on that?
[00:31:58] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. And I think that's a very real world pivot into how that works in the business world. You know, situational awareness is Ricky Gervais.
He's not the cleanest comedian, but he gives a funny comedic sketch about who knew these things would be offensive, right? And he goes a list of like 20 years ago, when I was a kid, we would say this. Ten years ago when I was in, you know, I would say this and I won't repeat what he says, but it's a comedy sketch where he says, just as language changes over time, something I said 20 years ago, and everybody said it is now something offensive that'll cost you a civil lawsuit or losing your job. And he says, you got to have situational awareness. You got to change with the times. And you never know what's going on in somebody. Somebody else's world. So I always like to take that tactical pause, that deep breath and say, hey, I just want to make sure everything's okay. Are you okay? And you can precursor any conversation. Say, hey, man, what's going on with you? Everything okay? You having a good morning? Like, no, I'm not. I spilled coffee in my lap and this guy cut me off at the intersection and whatnot, and now they're on edge. Well, guess what? You can just kind of pause that conversation and bring it up in an hour or tomorrow and probably not lose the entire thing you were going for. Right? Right.
[00:33:04] Speaker B: 100%. Definitely 100%. So go. Let's kick pivot back to the leadership side. So how do you know when I'm leading from conviction versus just repeating what I heard from someone else?
[00:33:14] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. That's a great thing. So one thing I tell a lot of my leaders is most people are well read, good leaders are good readers. And so they have a collection of their favorite quotes, their favorite scenes and movies, a couple of their favorite experiences. And I say you need to stop collecting quotes and start acting so that you can be somebody worth quoting. Right. And so that's, that's a part where you're living with conviction. Right. So conviction means that your passion, the vision that you have set for yourself, for your team, for your company, is being lived out. Right. And the most important step, which is also the hardest step, is the first step. Lace up your shoes, take action. Write the plan down. Now go do. Once you start doing the conviction shows, if you're convicted, it will now show if other people aren't passionate about it because they're unsure of somebody else's idea. Idea. Oh, my gosh. Scary. Change is happening and they're all afraid of change. Once you start doing and you start going and you get wins, people become passionate about what they're good at or what they're winning at. And so that's where leading with conviction shows. It can only be shown through action, not words.
[00:34:19] Speaker B: Wow. So, you know, I, I think about that and I think about just some of the leaders I've had in the past and some of the leaders that are out there, and then I think about now in. I'm in real, in the real estate world, pocket. Right. So I, I manage a team who are entrepreneurs. So they've partnered with me to be on the team. And you lead them even different. You agree? Because now we're talking about not an employee but, but somebody who's decided to
[00:34:47] Speaker A: partner with you 100%. So if you're familiar with like Brandon Dawson and his wife Natalie Dawson, they, they run a company, it's Affiliated with the 10X brand, Cardone Venture Ventures and they literally train people as one of their major portions. They said they have these break points in, in your companies and each break point has a whole host of different things that you tweak and pivot in order to get to the next level. Get to the next level. But one of the most important parts is how you lead and who you lead. Right. In the early stages of being an entrepreneur, you're leading everyone. You're. The buck stops here. Right. And then eventually you get managers and supervisors and executives and eventually an entire board. Right, Right. And so how you lead and who you lead changes throughout. And if you try to be the entrepreneur, the solopreneur down in the trenches the entire time and you've got past the 1 million mark, 5 million mark, 25 million mark, and you're not changing, you'll never get through the breakthrough point. You'll never develop yourself as a better leader and of course building up other leaders underneath you, well, that, that's important and you'll miss that as well.
[00:35:46] Speaker B: We're going to talk some more about leadership when we come right back. We'll see you guys again again in a few minutes.
Welcome back to battle Ready. You need to stay connected to this show or every NOW Media TV show live or on demand, anytime you like. Download your free Now Media TV app on Rokore iOS and unlock non stop bilingual programming in English and Spanish. If you're on the move, move. You can catch the podcast version on www.nowmedia.tv. so I'm back with Ryan Kahn. Ryan, welcome back.
[00:36:22] Speaker A: Thanks for being back, boy.
[00:36:25] Speaker B: Before we get into this, this, this segment because I'm really looking forward to it. Tell everybody. How can somebody get a hold of you if they want to continue the conversation with Ryan?
[00:36:34] Speaker A: Best way to get a hold of me is probably shooting me an email or one of the links through the website. So five talents Strategic finance. That's the website right there. That's the number five talents. Sf. That's short for strategic finance. You go to the dot com there you fill out a form that goes straight to the email bin and one of my me or one of my team members get, get a hold of it. I'm not too big to answer some emails and stuff like that. My LinkedIn profile is a great way to message me. It's, it's ryan Khan on LinkedIn. You'll see my banner. It has CS Business Consulting. Now go ahead and give out my CS Business Consulting email as well. That's the one that I most frequently check and it's Ryan csbizcon.com. so that's C S, B I Z, C O N short for business consulting. And if you get a hold of me in one of those place, you're, you're guaranteed to get an answer.
[00:37:18] Speaker B: Oh, perfect, perfect. Now Ryan, during the break we talked a little bit about, we talking about leadership. Leadership. It, it represents itself in a lot of different ways. And you can be an individual contributor and be a leader, but most people just, you know, look at somebody in a leadership position.
What is the big difference between being a leader as an individual contributor and being a leader as a manager type leader of a group.
[00:37:49] Speaker A: Gotcha. So what you're talking about is what I call positional leadership versus personal power. So personal power means you a person based on the trust level, the, the relationships you built, the performance that you've had, the, the care that you show. You could be in a very low position in, in the corporate ladder and have immense leadership.
And one thing I always tell people is everyone is a leader, okay? Everyone is leader. Because no matter where you are in life, at some point someone's going to look at you and say, should I do that or not do that? And that influence there is leadership. Positional leadership is exactly that. I have the role or title that gives me authority based on structure, policy, sop, whatever it is, and I can force you to comply based on no other thing than my position or title. So if I'm the, the sergeant, I can force a patrolman to go answer a call they don't want to answer. Where if I am in personal power and I'm sitting here with a couple of my units and a call comes up on the radio, I go, oh man, that's a really lousy call that's going to get somebody stuff working overtime. I said, I'm going to go ahead and jump on that. Somebody says, no, no, Ryan, you got a birthday party to plan with your kids. I'll take care of it. That personal power gets somebody else to jump on that call. Not that I was trying to manipulate, but that personal power shows other people that, that somebody needs to fall on the sword and go ahead and jump on this lousy law enforcement call, or I'm going to pick up this extra project, or I'm going to stay late and work on that big client's urgent need, and I'm going to go ahead and take care of this. And the personal power to have people watch, learn, and influence that is way more important than title power. When you have positional power, that's slapping the table and saying, I know you want to do this, but you got to do that. You should do that about one out of every thousand times that you have to get people to, to perform or influence. Right. And because every time you do that, there's something called leadership capital, you are taking a heavy, heavy payment, heavy loan out of your leadership capital when you have to slap the table. And for somebody, because I said so, because I'm the vice president or whatever, that's a huge, huge payment against your leadership capital. That personal capital is like, guys, we got to do this. It supports the mission, it supports the team.
And somebody says, I don't want to, but I'll do it right then that was personal power. You know, if that helps clarify things. No.
[00:40:07] Speaker B: 100%. 100%. While we're talking about in leadership and an individual contributor moving to a, To a leadership role, one of the things that I've seen was always a big challenge as people move through the ranks is, is the art of delegating.
Oh, talk a little bit about that.
[00:40:27] Speaker A: Yep. So. So the art of delegating starts with some serious personal reflection collection.
[00:40:32] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:40:33] Speaker A: And so I'll try to. I'll try to ramp it because you can get pretty detailed on the stuff. So I'll probably hit the high point, this one. First thing you need to do is you need to study what is your best and highest use. So literally, you have to sit there and make all of these tasks. And I walk people through an Excel spreadsheet.
Literally. Tell me everything that you do in any given day and week right now, if it's a monthly activity and it pops on the radar once a month and it's not crucial to performance, you can leave it off. And we'll, we'll make that one of the exceptions. But your regular root routine, and you get this list of 20, 50, 80 tasks that you're doing on a regular basis. And I want you to pick the three that are your highest and best use. This is what I'm best at. This is what produces the most value. This is what contributes to the company. This is what I should be doing as much as possible. Good. It is now your job to be doing that task to 24 to 30 hours a week. Most people, when we do the time analysis study, they're doing their highest and best use two to four hours a week. Week. You got a 40 hour work week and maybe 10% of the time you're doing what your best calling is. So we got to flip that script. And if somebody else on that list can perform a task 70% to 80% as well as you can perform the task, guess what? That's A. Anywhere from a C minus to a B minus in the American grading system. Right. If somebody can get a C or a B in in performing the task that's on that list, test, you give them the task and you're going to delegate. But then you got to mentor, coach and train so that they can get up into the A plus range. Right? So if they can get it 80 done, then all you have to do is review, mentor and coach, or even assign somebody else to review, mentor and coach. But what we like to do is we like to try to delegate, right? And then somebody comes back and it's not exactly right. It's not the way I would do it. So I'm going to do one or two things. I'm just going to fix it real quick and give it back for you to submit. Or I'll just give it back to me. I'll do it more myself. Right. And that's not delegation. You didn't even try. And people get to make mistakes, right? People get to make efforts before. Before you truly, even in baseball, you get three strikes until you're out. Why would you expect them any less to have to. They have to learn, produce and grow. So after you do that, then you have to delegate time to actual training. I tell people minimum two hours a week, a one hour of full on planning and a one hour of full on training. And once you get good at it, you'll be doing two hours of training. You cannot expect people to delegate two things that you are not willing to do yourself and something that you have not trained them to do. And back to the PTO if they can't figure this task out. It's a reflection of you as the leader and trainer, not a reflection of them just being a knucklehead who's dumb and shouldn't have been hired in the first place. That's almost never the situation, Right?
[00:43:07] Speaker B: Sure. You know how many times, honestly, that's the situation that I found as an HR professional is when you bring a high Level individual into a corporation or company, and they start wanting to replace people that have been there 20 and 30 years because they say they don't know their job job. And then my first question is, how does this person not know their job? They've been doing the same thing forever. Right. That's just a whole different thought. Well, something that you brought up that really, really resonates with me. As you said, give you it and I'm going to paraphrase. So Gary Keller writes a book and Gary Keller is Keller Williams founder. Right. He writes a book. Give yourself an hourly value and never do something under that value.
[00:43:47] Speaker A: Value.
[00:43:47] Speaker B: It's kind of in line with what you said about what the best use of your time is. Right.
And, and when I first came into real estate, I, I, I just kind of guessed I had never sold a house. I'm like, okay, I'm worth this.
So my, my thing was I'm never going to do paperwork.
[00:44:06] Speaker A: I just refuse. Right.
[00:44:08] Speaker B: So I hired somebody day one, which allowed me to go out and do what I do well, well, just find people, talk to people, network and bring people in to allow us to buy, help help them buy and sell homes. And I brought somebody in to automatically take care of the administrative section, which, I mean, you can do 20, $25 an hour versus the couple hundred dollars an hour verse that that I felt my value was. And that's come kind of same in line with what you just said, right?
[00:44:36] Speaker A: That's exactly right. I get a lot of pushback that says, well, I can't afford to hire somebody to do this. And my answer is, you can't afford not to. To. Right. If you're only doing, let's say in a good scenario, you're only doing four hours of your highest and best use. And let's just say we're talking about another accounting firm that I'm training. Right? I said your billable hours, 250, 350 an hour for some of these advisory services you're planning, you're only making four hours. At three, you're making $1,200 a week doing advisory. What if you were making 30 hours a week doing advisory, right. I said, I mean, now you're, you're looking at this multiple, this exponential. You can't afford not to chase that money and not, not to execute, not take on more advisory clients. You're, you're not marketing or you're pushing away clients because you can't keep up with the demand of what you're refusing to delegate. You can't afford not to hire somebody else. So, no. And it's not that he's an unwilling to work. It's not that you were unwilling to do the paperwork, but you realized your value and said, in order for me to grow, achieve, and have that growth mindset, I've got to get somebody in here to do the paperwork. I'm willing. And guess what? I'll roll up my sleeves. If we get three sales in a row and this person gets behind mind, I'll roll up my sleeves and knock out one of those pieces of paperwork. But that's not where you're going to spend your time, right? That's not where you're going to live. And so that's an important part. You know, I always tell people, you got to be willing to run into the fire as well, roll up your sleeves and do work is one of my pillars. And in law enforcement, I was never a fireman, right there. Usually a little healthy, sometimes unhealthy, but usually healthy rivalry between police and fire. And in one of those circumstances, I responded to a burning residence, right? And. And oftentimes police are the first ones there. There's more calls, there's more stuff like that. So we get to the residence, and it's not just a little bit of smoke. It is fully engulfed in flame. And I don't hear the fire department sirens. So I run up to the door and I look inside just to make see if there's people out, because one of the neighbors is saying, there's people and there's people. I look in. There's a very awkward setup, but you could see straight in through the entryway into the kitchen. And then there's like a couch and living room area. And there is an extremely large woman sitting in there with her legs on. On fire, right? And I'm talking full and golf. Flames are coming over my head. I'm having to crouch down in order to talk with something. Come over here. Crawl to me, crawl to me. And she's trying to beat her legs out. And she is halfway successful. And she's like, I can't walk, I can't crawl. So I run into the flames, run into the fire. I'm wearing a polymer blend uniform that likes to melt, right? So I grab this woman, I scoop her up, I literally pat her legs out from being on fire, and I carry her out to the curb right as the fire truck is pulling up. And I set her on the curve of the fire truck. She goes, my husband's in there. So I run back up to the door with the husband. And I go to go back inside again, and this time I have to crouch even lower. And I've inhaled smoke and all that kind of stuff. And the husband's in there with a bucket trying to throw water on things. So get out of the house. Get out of the house. He ends up running out the back door, and he's okay. And my sergeant was watching, like, as I was coming out, he beat the fire truck. He goes, did you just run into that house? That I had to. She was going to die. She was on fire. Right? And generally in law enforcement, we tell people we don't run into burning buildings, right? That's the fire department's job. They've got gear for that. I said, well, there's an exception to every rule. And that, that woman, she's. I actually hurt my back and I've got a permanent injury from it.
But her life was saved that day. Right? And so if you're not willing to run into the fire and do something that's not your job, it's not critical to success, then you will not ever truly understand the power of delegation. The people look at you as a leadership example of. I know my boss is willing to run into the fire and do the work. He's willing to grind up during tax season and help with tax returns. He's willing to get into real estate and. And help fill out all this paperwork. You're going to get buy in from people beyond your wildest dreams if you're able and willing to do those things.
[00:48:07] Speaker B: Well, you know what? What I take from this conversation simple but not easy. I do not become battle ready by learning more and doing less. I become battle ready by building habits, standards, awareness, and the courage to act. Ryan, I appreciate you being on the show.
You know, we're done. I man, it was amazing. I look forward to talking to you again. And everybody else, welcome. Battle ready.
