Transcribed by AI

Intro 0:04
You're listening to dare to differentiate a podcast for business owners in crowded industries who want to learn how to rise above the noise. In this show, we focus not on doing everything for everybody, but on doing a few things for the right people with excellence. So if you're ready to leave the herd, then you've come to the right place. Let's get into the show.

Susan Tatum 0:26
Welcome back. I'm Susan Tatum and today I'm talking with Lee Eisenstaedt, the founder at Leading with Courage Academy. Welcome, Lee. Thanks for being here.

Lee Eisenstaedt 0:35
Thanks so much, Susan. I'm grateful to have the opportunity to talk to you

Susan Tatum 0:39
well, so Lee to get started before we get too deep into our conversation, can you give us some background just tell us a little bit about yourself and, and what your team does there at the Leading with Courage Academy.

Lee Eisenstaedt 0:52
Sure, happy to do that. The Academy's been in existence for about four years. It's the second iteration of a company I started about six years ago. And what we focus on at the Academy is helping individuals and teams achieve peace of mind and confidence that they are being more effective leaders and managers. We do that with a series of workshops, assessments and coaching, which I'm sure we'll get into. My background has not always been in leadership, coaching and consulting. I was originally spent about 25 years with SC Johnson, a lot of the men, the makers of Pledge, Windex and those sorts of products, spent 25 years with them as a senior finance and Operations Executive in both the US and in Europe. And then I went on to become a CFO at RSM when I was there it was RSM McGladrey, one of the top five, top five accounting firms in the country, and then moved on to being COO at a largest, independently owned firm in Chicago that was eventually merged into Plant Moran. So I've got a long history as a finance and Operations Executive, and then made that jump over to leadership development several years ago. And that's really what I'm finding my passion is and what I enjoy doing, and like seeing how I'm able to help others improve the lives of their their own lives and the lives that the people they work with.

Susan Tatum 2:18
Interesting. So we're talking on this podcast, we talked about differentiation and competitive advantage. So how to how does leadership or or company culture or something like that? How does that factor into differentiation?

Lee Eisenstaedt 2:35
Well, I think if you take a broad look at it without leadership, and without culture, and probably culture comes first than leadership, I don't know that you even have anything to differentiate yourselves on, they become the key differentiators. For a business, anyone can make a widget. But it's the culture within which they make it ends the leadership of the organization. I think that helps them decide who they're going to attract and retain, how they're going to go to market. Just everything they do is influenced by their culture and the leadership. So I think ultimately, that's what differentiates one firm from another you sure one can have a better widget than the next but without that inspired, courageous leadership, and a culture that supports that. I don't know that you have much, or you may have something, but is it really sustainable? Is it a viable differentiation? I would say, and I don't think so. So what we keep finding is that what helps distinguish one organization from another is its culture, and then its leadership. That answer your question, Susan.

Susan Tatum 3:46
Absolutely, it does. And I think when we were talking previously, I jotted down a note that that said, many companies don't see the value of leadership, or I think maybe, maybe you said many people don't see the value. Why is that?

Lee Eisenstaedt 4:01
Well, and maybe I'm trying to recollect that I think it I think they see the value of leadership. I just don't think they value leadership development. We regularly hear from CEOs and senior people in organizations when we're talking to them about things that we could do to help them say, I don't need this stuff. I'm the CEO. I'm the head of R&D. That's why I got there. I know all this stuff. And the fact is they they don't or they are 100% self aware, none of us are 100% self aware. And I'm always reminded of this quote that I saw from Dr. Turner, which that said, 95% of us think we're self aware, but the real number is only 12 to 15%. And we find that all the time. We our biggest competitors aren't other leadership development coaches, other cosultants. It's people within organizations that think they can do this themselves. It's not that hard to do. And then they don't stick with it. So our best clients tend to be those that have already tried it twice themselves, and then realize they just don't have the time, interest or expertise to see it through to the end. And then they'll call on people like us and others that do similar things.

Susan Tatum 5:26
So this may be a stupid question. But when you talk about self awareness, is that the ability to see, to have a realistic view of yourself or to see weaknesses that you may have?

Lee Eisenstaedt 5:41
It's both seeing your weaknesses and your strengths. It is it is, you know, we all think we're fives in everything we do. But how often have we asked others? What do you think, how am I doing? What could I be doing better, which are three really key questions, you need to be asking all the time. But if you think you have the courage to ask that and you find out you're too. And everyone around you thinks you're too Well, guess what, you're no longer a five, you may think you are. But in their mind, you're a two. And I've always said or someone told me a while ago, and I've always used it now, we judge others by our intentions. We judge ourselves by our intentions, we judge others by their actions. And it's that difference between a five and a two? Well, I meant this as a five. Unfortunately, it's being perceived as a two. And you need to just ask others, as I said, How am I doing? What do you think? What could I be doing better? And then the real hard part of that asking is hard enough. But the really tough part is listening to what you hear and then doing something with it. And that that's part in part where leading with courage comes from where we formed the firm. what we did.

Susan Tatum 6:51
I think I've I've worked for a few bosses in the past that thought that just having the reviews done was enough. And you didn't have to do and you get feedback about what other people think. But then you don't have to do anything about it.

Lee Eisenstaedt 7:07
Yeah, I mean, we've all seen that we do client work, we've done client loyalty assessments, to work through a 360 assessment. And as you said, they think that's, that's where the process ends. That's just the beginning of it. And the shame of it is, we always warn people don't even do this, unless you're committed to doing something with the feedback, you've, you've raised the expectations and people by asking them for feedback, that you're going to do something with it. And if you don't, then your credibility gets damaged. And most of us can't take too much damage to our credibility before we're just not trusted anymore. So if you don't have if you're not going to be committed to follow through, on what you hear, and you don't have to follow through on all of it. But you got to do something. If you don't do anything, you're better off not wasting the time or the money to go through the process.

Susan Tatum 8:04
So what if, if I were running a business and and I'm a lousy leader, or i or i don't have good self awareness? How how's it going to show up? What pains Am I going to feel from it?

Lee Eisenstaedt 8:18
Well, you yourself may be struggling to make an impact. You may have a team that has high turnover, you may have a team that while they're all there, they're not engaged, they aren't energized, focused and present. So those kinds of things are telling you, we have turnover and our customer base, I mean, it could be any number of behaviors or things that you can see that are going wrong. And it typically begin with your inability to form a strong relationship, a trusted relationship with others. And that's where we spend a lot of our time is helping people understand or Forge, save or strengthen those relationships that are critical to them, making an impact to them, implementing their agendas, that sort of thing. And so I think that's where you'll start to see it happen. You're just not, you're struggling, you're not meeting your objectives and people are, are unhappy.

Susan Tatum 9:19
And nobody's paying attention to what you're, you keep telling them what to do when they don't want to do it.

Lee Eisenstaedt 9:26
Further, isn't that it's all? It's all part of it. Right? I mean, you don't have enough credibility and you don't have a good vision and you haven't gotten there buy in before you start implementing some things broadly. Yeah, it's gonna be tough for you. It'd be tough for you.

Susan Tatum 9:42
Well, speaking about relationships. I think you were also talking about relationships with clients or prospects to be a differentiator. What did you mean by that?

Lee Eisenstaedt 9:52
Well, when we're working, I think that was in particularly with professional service firms where the lawyers, accountants, engineers think that the real differentiator for them might be their technical ability. And, you know, I'm just a great account. I know all the I know, like IRS code forwards and backwards and tell you what page to find this regulation on my experience of doing client loyalty surveys, and having been a client of professional service firms is most of us can't tell the difference from one providers, technical expertise to the other. And so, you know, that's, that's why they become commodities, in many ways. Another differentiator sometimes is where are they located, but the Internet has really leveled that playing field. And when you peel back the onion, and say what differentiates one firm from another, it could be even consumer packaged goods, anything unbelieving is it's the ability to form a relationship between yourself in a b2b relationship that's between yourself and you know, your end user there, the customer. And same with even a consumer packaged goods, the ability of the company to build a relationship, an emotional attachment between themselves, and the people using their product. If they can establish that relationship, then it's really hard to pry that individual away to, you know, for a competitor to fly them away from you. But so many people just think, Well, you know, it's all about price, or it's all about the service. And those all are elements in it, but how are you building that relationship with your users?

Susan Tatum 11:37
Just listening to you talk that makes me think of I'm a B2B person, but the relationships that are built with consumer products that don't necessarily involve a person, but you feel like you have a relationship with a brand?

Lee Eisenstaedt 11:58
Right?

Susan Tatum 12:00
I guess that takes it into the to the marketing realm. And you're talking about relationships that so for professional services, or even for salespeople, I think with a complex sale, the relationship between buyer and seller? it's so critical.

Lee Eisenstaedt 12:10
Yeah, but I mean, I'll take you know, you talked about B2C, I think Apple is that way. I mean, I don't have a relationship with anyone in Cupertino, California. I use their products every day, I have a very close relationship with my Mac, with my iPhone, with my iPad. And I find if I can't, it's the service they provide. It's the design, it's the overall experience that I have with their products. When I go into the Apple Store, when I call them on their helpline, they have managed to make me a loyal follower. And I've never, you know, the only people they have are the probably the lowest paid people in the organization, in the Apple store or on the helpline that I'm dealing with. But they all have the same commitment to a vision, they all are energized, their focus, their mission is to help you succeed. And you don't get that every place. And somehow they've managed to make me feel a relationship to the company to their products.

Susan Tatum 13:17
But that has to start at the top, isn't it?

Lee Eisenstaedt 13:19
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely isn't going to be a grassroots sort of thing. And you just can't rely on that many people having a shared vision, that's what the leaders are there to do is provide a vision, and then share it broadly. And get people to buy into that vision, and to follow them and achieving it. So that that's the real role of the leader. It's having the courage to set a vision and then stick with it.

Susan Tatum 13:49
So on the topic of focus, you specialize in some pretty specific leadership areas. It seems like I think mergers and acquisitions was one of them.

Lee Eisenstaedt 14:00
Yeah, I mean, we focus on some specific situations or lower our workshops, coaching and assessments apply anywhere, we're finding that they have a real fit with by side m&a transactions when there's a cultural integration, or we're finding and we're just starting to move into this space when a company sets up or has had for a few years and employee stock ownership plan and Aesop, that they have a high need for a culture of leadership. They both of these organizations need to build relationships quickly. They need to foster a common vision. They need a pipeline of strong leaders and managers, if they want that m&a deal or if they want the Aesop to realize all the benefits that they hoped for when they entered into the transaction. And so we're finding those two areas are particularly strong for us. And I think part of that is because all we're doing Focusing on leadership development, we're not doing a lot of other things. We're not going to be the, you know, the Swiss Army Knife of consultants, we really just focus on leadership development in these areas, not just m&a deals. The other one that's really important is employee engagement. We have some great tools around that hope people understand just what's going right, what's going wrong and where it isn't. Why not? And where it is, what can we do? What can we learn from that? And the other nice thing about everything we do, which ties back in is we can measure all of this, it isn't like a consultant that comes in and you say, well, what's the value of the leadership program? And people say, Well, you know, they talk with their hands a lot, or they say, wait for a year to look at the p&l or your turnover statistics, we can tell you how we're doing every 90 days, if not more often. And so we can measure everything. And it took us two years to put together a toolkit that does allow us to do that everything we do can be graphed. And you can see the progress you're making or not making and then how you're going to turn that around.

Susan Tatum 16:04
So has the focus on these leadership situations like the the m&a and stock ownership plans. has that affected your business? Do you feel a difference from being focused like that?

Lee Eisenstaedt 16:18
Well, it's certainly easier for people to refer us on to others. When we would talk about in general m&a deals and not specifically by side, we just would talk to manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors about leadership development. Because it's a general description of what we do, we found that the more specific we got, the easier it was for people to identify situations we even don't talk about. And you know, we'll get asked, and it's a common question, what size companies do you work with, when people are trying to figure out where, where you fit? and I'll tell them, it's, you know, 20 million to 500 million. But what I really urge them is on the situations, they have a problem with employee engagement, they just completed a buy side merger, they've got a nice app, we're bringing in a new leader, because people others can relate to those. When I know when my neighbor is doing those kinds of deals, those kinds of situations, they've got a, we just did a big merger, I have no idea what size their company is, how many employees they've got, how many states they're in, or the international company. And so we found that we could get real specific about situations. And then specific about what people might say, what would be the triggers? for them needing us? Yeah, yeah, well, the difference in the world.

Susan Tatum 17:41
So that's, that's a pretty good competitive advantage for you, for people to be able to that clearly identify when they can be referring you.

Lee Eisenstaedt 17:52
Yeah, it's an advantage that also, and anyone that's doing any kind of work like this knows that you've only got one thing you're selling, that's time. And the faster I can decide, or make a decision that you're not a good fit, when I can qualify, the faster I can qualify you as a prospect, the better it is for the both of us. And so by being more specific, it's just easier to to qualify leads, it's no different than when you're looking for a job and pretty much like looking for a job to tell people. Yeah, I want to work as an engineer. Well, you know, that's a little too broad, or I'll do anything. What really, what do you have in mind? And unless people can get real specific? It's hard. I mean, another example I think maybe we've had, it's like saying, Oh, yeah, I want to a job in medicine. Really? Well, that's a pretty broad field. Which part of medicine Are you qualified to work in? And what are you interested in? And once you can narrow it down, people can help you more?

Susan Tatum 18:54
Absolutely. You know, one of the things that you mentioned, just being like, I'm gonna go back to the referral thing, because I see a lot of businesses that get the bulk of their new business through referrals. And what I've noticed is, is a, they lack focus, because it's they if you're living off of referrals, and not that referrals are a bad thing. But you don't have as much control over what gets referred to you. And then you find yourself and I've done this before taking on clients I shouldn't have taken on because they were referred to me by someone I respect.

Lee Eisenstaedt 19:31
I haven't experienced that as, we don't get anything. I shouldn't say anything. That's a little too. General, I suppose. But everything comes to us through referrals. No one's gonna hire a leadership coach to work with their senior people. Based on something I throw out on the internet or my website. They're gonna want to talk to someone that's worked with us or someone that's had experience and say, you know, you ought to call leading with Courage Academy or you gotta call Susan or some it's going to come That way, shame on me, then if I'm taking on non strategic prospects, and I, sometimes we have to, especially when we're starting out or if we're in real financial hardships will take on anyone, I'm not saying we would need but we've walked away from clients and you have to have the courage to do that. Because if you take on too many of those that prevents you from taking on the really good ones, the higher profit, the more strategic. And chances are, you can't help some of those. And those that you can't help, even though you took them on with the best of intentions, they end up damaging your brand, because when someone talks to them about Leading with Courage Academy, let's say that Oh, yeah, I used them. They didn't help me at all. Well, it wasn't, maybe we did a terrific job, but you just weren't the right fit. You weren't coachable. You were your objectives were way outside of what we could deliver maybe what you wanted coaching on wasn't in our skill set. Shame on us for taking you on. But you know, and we deserve, I guess, some of the bruising that we get from that. And that's a hard lesson to learn. But you have to learn that.

Susan Tatum 21:11
Well, you've done a great job of articulating things that I try to tell business owners when they don't want to focus, you know, they get a Why can't just do Aesop's and m&a is because what if somebody else over here wants me to do something and I miss this opportunity. And that leads them to be continued to be just very general.

Lee Eisenstaedt 21:32
If it causes you to lose focus, and especially if it's causing you to walk away from more profitable, more strategic work, then I think you had, you know, shame on you, you need to walk away from it. But sometimes if you have capacity, and there's no better alternative than doing this non strategic work well, then you really need to do it with the dollar is better than nothing at all, I suppose. But if you have alternatives, you're better off going with those that fit with what you're looking for.

Susan Tatum 22:07
Well, I guess my my point is, if you if you focus, then you won't find yourself in a situation where you have to take on business that's outside of your expertise. As you've got a good flow of business.

Lee Eisenstaedt 22:21
You're absolutely right. You're right.

Susan Tatum 22:24
Well, Lee Thank you, this has been great. It's, I appreciate your sharing your experience. I know our audience is going to get tremendous value out of this. And if they want to contact you to learn more about what you're doing, what's the best way for them to do that?

Lee Eisenstaedt 22:37
Well, one is just give us a call the phone number we're in Chicago, it's 312-827-2643. We have a website, www dot LWCAcademy all one word dot com. You can just send me an email Lee@LWCAcademy.com And I've also got a book that the fourth book that was published about two months ago now it's available on Amazon called Leading with Courage. And that's the foundation piece for the whole Academy. And so they could read that. And that's kind of the How to manual for what we've been talking about.

Susan Tatum 23:17
Oh, well, that sounds like a great thing to pick up.

Lee Eisenstaedt 23:19
Yeah.

Susan Tatum 23:21
Your unbiased opinion.

Lee Eisenstaedt 23:25
Yes, absolutely.

Susan Tatum 23:27
All right, Lee thanks again and have a good rest of the day.

Lee Eisenstaedt 23:31
Thank you, Susan. I've enjoyed talking to you. Bye bye. Bye bye.

Outro: 23:35
A consistent flow of new business prospects is vital to the growth of professional services firms. The conversion company helps you find and engage those who are most likely to become profitable new clients, and avoid those who are not. To learn how we do it. Visit theconversioncompany.com. You've been listening to dare to differentiate. To ensure that you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast player. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.