Market It With ATMA
This podcast is about giving business owners the tips, tools, and strategies they need to market and grow their businesses.
Market It With ATMA
Self-Awareness: The Root of Business Growth
What if the key to unlocking your business potential isn't found in the latest software or marketing strategy, but in something far more fundamental—understanding how you and your team are wired to communicate? Dan Dalton, owner of P3:14 Consulting, brings three decades of human resources expertise to this enlightening conversation about the transformative power of personality profiling.
Drawing from his experience across banking, healthcare, retail, and manufacturing, Dan reveals how personality assessment tools like DISC and Insights Discovery can revolutionize workplace dynamics. "Self-awareness is the root of self-improvement," he explains, describing how understanding communication preferences helps teams connect more effectively. From the fiery red "be brief, be bright, be gone" personalities preferences to the earth green "show me that you care" energy types, these insights create a framework for meaningful connection.
Particularly valuable for small to medium-sized businesses, personality profiling helps leaders place the right people in the right roles. By analyzing job requirements against personality strengths, companies can build teams where everyone operates in their zone of genius rather than constantly fighting against their natural tendencies. This alignment doesn't just create happier employees—it directly impacts the bottom line through improved productivity and reduced miscommunication and a healthier culture.
Dan also works with young adults ages 15-22, helping them understand their personality types before making critical career decisions. Since personality is largely established by our mid-teens, these insights can prevent costly mistakes like changing college majors or entering misaligned career paths. In our AI-driven world, this human-centered approach provides a crucial counterbalance, reminding us that understanding ourselves and others remains the foundation for both personal and professional success.
Ready to transform your team dynamics or help a young person discover their natural strengths? Connect with Dan Dalton to learn how personality profiling can create clearer communication, stronger relationships, and better business outcomes.
🎙 Market It With ATMA Podcast
Brought to you by Advent Trinity Marketing Agency
www.adventtrinity.com
Welcome back to Market it With Atma, where we share the tips, tools and strategies to help your business be successful. Today we're talking about one of the most underrated but most powerful topics I've had on the show personality profiling. We have on the show today Mr Dan Dalton, owner of P314 Consulting. Welcome, dan.
Speaker 3:Hi Story. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great. So I love, love, love, love what you do, because in this day and age of AI right now, people are kind of losing who they are, would you say.
Speaker 3:I think so. I think that there's a lot of lack of self-awareness that is happening with folks, especially with young people, that are kind of growing up without the opportunity to learn from a failure or just, you know, having so many things handed to them or told what they need to do.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:I think that there's a loss of learning how to critically think or make decisions.
Speaker 2:Definitely. I know, um, in the olden days, as my kids would say, we had our, our parents to look up to, to really kind of mold our personalities. And some people don't have that luxury. So it's really hard to not look at everyone else and say, okay, I'm just going to take yours and be a part of you and be a part of me, but you do have a personality that develops and this is how you help people. So in my opinion, this is the most important thing you can have in a business or in a college in general. They should really really take hold of what you do. Can you walk us through what P314 Consulting is?
Speaker 3:Right. P314 Consulting is basically an organization that is designed for people to raise their level of self-awareness. Okay. There's two populations that I look to reach out to those medium to small-sized businesses, and especially startups or young people between the ages of 15 and 22. The idea being is that self-awareness is the root of self-improvement. A lot of times we don't know really how we're wired. You know, we don't stop and understand how we take in information, how we are perceived to other people.
Speaker 3:Exactly how. You know how we give out information, how we make decisions. You know how do we go about recharging our batteries when it's time to just sort of reset on that. It's different with everybody and understanding where you are as a person, what your personality strengths are, and it's not a right or wrong thing, it's just the preferences that we lead with in different types of personality aspects.
Speaker 2:Okay, that is something I think everyone needs personally, but can you tell us a little bit of your background and why you started P314 Consulting? What were you seeing?
Speaker 3:I have been for the last 30 years, have been a human resources professional in several different industries in banking, in healthcare, high-end retailing and in manufacturing. So for the last 30 years I've had the opportunity of primarily being focused on employee development process and performance improvement. Process and performance improvement and some of the tools that I learned to use were various tools throughout the years, but had to do with understanding how people learn, adult learning, personality profiles, how people take in information, what is important to them, how they process information. So tools like Myers-Briggs type indicator, wiley disk, everything disk, insights, discovery, and John Maxwell has a tool called John Maxwell's disk. All of these are tools that help people understand just exactly what their personality makeup is. Are they direct, Do they process and need information or data, or do they make decisions more on what feels right in their gut or what is the best impact for the most number of people? All of these are aspects of personality that drive the way people respond to the various stimuli that comes their way in everyday life. Okay.
Speaker 3:And I think if you understand how you're wired, then the first thing is it improves the quality of communication that you have with those around you.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:You know how you like to take in information. You can help people understand what information you need and at what level, but at the same time, you can always flex to how they take in information, which improves your communication to them.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's a great point. So to that point, that seems like it could really affect a business owner in the hiring process and how you lead, how you work. Why do you primarily focus on small to medium-sized businesses?
Speaker 3:A couple of reasons why my organization focuses on that. First of all, it's only me. I'm not quite geared up enough to handle a large population of potential trainees. The basis of personality profiling and what you learn at that level of communication needs to be integrated into all processes, policies, procedures and even the performance evaluation process, even down to how you set up agendas for one-on-ones or staff meetings. It's a lot easier to get that integrated into the fiber of operation of a smaller organization than it would be a multinational or much larger.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, okay, Okay. So how? How does personality profiling help business owners put the right people in the right roles? Does it create better alignment?
Speaker 3:It does. It does If you think about it. A job description can be assessed on the different tasks that the job description is saying are the deliverables for that role. Each task may actually have an aspect of personality profiling or strengths.
Speaker 3:So, for instance, if I look at a job description for something that is very detail oriented and the deliverables are the precision in reports or accuracy in numbers, then I know that the personality that is most apt to be successful in that role is going to be someone who can focus and feels comfortable in detail and information. Well, there might be. Let's say, take your job description as a marketing professional. Your job description calls for being outgoing, to being flexible in communication situations, to be creative, different side of the brain is used.
Speaker 2:All the time right.
Speaker 3:So what we can do through this personality profiling is take a look at the job description and come up with an approximation of a personality profile that would most likely be successful in that role. Now, it's not an exact science and it's certainly not something that you could use from a legal standpoint in recruiting. Okay. But it is information that could make you, as a hiring manager, make a better decision on the people that you're bringing in to fill a particular role.
Speaker 2:That is pivotal. That would seem like the highest priority to me, especially in a small business. When you have three to five employees, or even ten, that intimate relationship is bound to happen, and it seems like if you're delivering or receiving information wrong, it can maybe cripple a company, would you say.
Speaker 3:True, and not to mention that you know, for instance, my personality type. In the DISC profile, I lead with the I, which is that involvement. That my personality is, that I like to be included and involved. I also have a lot of energy that gears toward impacting as many people for the good as possible. Right, one of my lowest personality traits is precision, detail and data Okay.
Speaker 3:I understand the importance of the precision of the numbers, okay. So when I'm having to do an aspect of my job that deals with precision of numbers, I can do it, but it drains me, it really zaps my energy. Okay, whereas asking me to hey Dan, would you facilitate a workshop where we can just get some discussion going around some issues within our organization? That's right in my wheelhouse from a personality standpoint, so that's energizing to me. I get excited about that. I can lead a workshop and it charges my battery, so to speak, and I'm ready to go play a round of golf after a workshop.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's amazing For you to understand that it gives you the availability that if you are put in that first situation, you understand that you need to recharge after correct.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, absolutely. And how do I recharge Most personality profiling tools? And there are many, and I'm not necessarily promoting one over another. I use two or three myself, but there are numerous tools, but most of them are going to start with, are you introverted or extroverted? Right. Okay, now there's a traditional understanding of those terms.
Speaker 3:When somebody hears those terms, they think of the introvert as the wallflower and the extrovert as the guy with the lampshade on his head at a party. You know, and that's not necessarily the definition that we're going for here, what an introvert is from a personality profiling tool is someone who recharges their battery by seclusion, by finding their favorite spot, curling up with their favorite book, being alone, their music, cup of tea. You know, whatever it is that is intimate to them, the extrovert calls their friends together and goes to the ball game, or goes out and you know, has dinner with their friends or, you know, just has people over because they get their energy from inclusion and other people.
Speaker 3:The other side of the story is how do you make decisions? Do you make decisions where you need time and information that's going to be more of the sensing side or do you make decisions based on personal experience and the beneficial impact to as many people as possible? That's the feeling side. Okay, so when we have these two.
Speaker 3:Okay, so when we have these two quadrant, it basically makes quadrants Right. So the extrovert, who is, you know, a driven person who likes information, is going to be what we like to call the D, or the fiery red personality, and their mantra might be be brief, be bright and be gone.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love that.
Speaker 3:Tell me what you came to tell me, and then, leave because I've got to process the I or the sunshine yellow, and I'm using terms from a couple of the tools that I use. Right, these are the involved people. They're the extroverts, but they want and they're going to primarily make decisions more on what's. What's it feel like right in my gut, what is the impact for a positive impact for as many people as possible? Okay.
Speaker 3:Then you get down to the introverted side. The introverted side, who is the feeler, is the one who is focused on social justice. Show me that you care is their mantra.
Speaker 3:The introverted detail person is the C or the cool blue, and it's give me the information, give me time, give me data. So for somebody with my energy, who is in support of somebody who is a, a sea or a cool blue, I've got to make sure that I gather the information and then give them time. What I ask from them is to, every so often, just help me know that I'm okay, that I'm on the right track and that my involvement is headed in a way that is good for the organization.
Speaker 2:Wow. So to that point. There's a couple of things I wanted wanted to point out. I've done what I would say are personality profiles. I've submitted tests. You know you'll be on social media and submit those. That's not. You're not going in and having everybody write down their thoughts and feelings. I know as a female, especially in a very fast-paced business so it's a lot of personalities my mood changes. How the wind blows changes my mood. So when I fill out a test or information, I noticed that I fill it out one day I'm a different personality than I am a week later and fill out a test on personality profiling. So can you walk us through how you work with businesses at inception, when it comes to the hiring process or as a team, development and understanding? You're not just giving them tests. Can you walk us through how you approach that customer journey?
Speaker 3:Right? Well, to start with the personality profile tools, regardless of which ones you use, are going to start probably with a questionnaire, Some as short as just three minutes.
Speaker 2:And sorry to interrupt you again, but I wanted to say I feel like your history and your background in not dealing with people but figuring out how to communicate with people really has an effect on all of the different options you choose to use in your business, and that's what differentiates you from just having a disc assessment or one or the other. Is that right on?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think so. I think that all of us have work histories that help shape how we have utilized our personality profiles to be successful in our given roles so you are making it to where we're learning more on the proactive and rather than the reactive, and learning from your mistakes exactly and what one of the things that 3p 314 does is.
Speaker 3:We try to teach this as fundamentals that you could use in in the enhancement of the things that 3P314 does is. We try to teach this as fundamentals that you could use in the enhancement of the process, communication and decision making of you as an individual and you as an organization.
Speaker 2:OK, see, that helps clarify a lot for me. So I'd like to go back and ask how you walk through approaching a business and and what you do and the different steps you take, and then also your other focal point, which is helping young adults understand where they're going. Can you walk us through the team development first?
Speaker 3:sure, sure so. With an organization, if we were to come in, we would first ask, you know just, we would ask three basic questions what, what's working, where are you getting stuck and what do you need to do differently? This is a concept that I learned from Alan Fine, who wrote a book called you Already Know how to Be Great. Okay.
Speaker 3:And it's a feedback loop that it can be very fundamental. Just three questions that it can be very fundamental, just three questions. You could use this not only to give feedback but seek information, to do that first level of discovery. You could even use it as meeting formats for agendas. Interesting. There's the three categories and then fill in the detail bullet points underneath that. So we want to find out. Okay, where are you now?
Speaker 2:Okay, and you're. You're talking about, from a CEO, a C-suite perspective. You're going to ask the C-suite person that's come to you that pretty much manages everyone, right and you're going to ask them these questions right, Because what I'm wanting to find out is where do they see the potential breakdown or areas of development?
Speaker 3:Because you can look at any organization and it's kind of based on the same questions is what do we want to keep doing? What's working Okay. And with the, where do we get? Where are we getting stuck? Do we need to fix it, update it or replace it? Okay, so those are the three main points that they really yeah, and then, lastly, is what do we need to do differently? Are there wholesale changes that are necessary, or is it just some adjusting?
Speaker 3:okay, so with that in the end the case, then we first have to learn. Okay, we're going to need to communicate with everybody, because the possibility that our next step is some kind of process change and if you don't know how to help people understand how they take in information to make decisions, then how are you going to present the process change to them in a way that they can process it?
Speaker 3:Wow Um if you have a bunch of people with the personality types like you and I have that that outgoing the um extroverted you know, feeling type information and you just throw us a bunch of spreadsheets that show the statistical analysis of why this change is necessary, that's not going to be the best way for us to process, to make that decision. But if you come to us and say this change is necessary because here's the impact for you, here's the impact of what it does to your position and the task that we're asking of you, this is the impact to our staff. This is the impact to our clients.
Speaker 2:And your bottom line at the end of the day, right.
Speaker 3:Ultimately the bottom line.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:So then we do. The personality profiling tools help everyone understand theirs first.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you kind of what I would say is, after you have established with C-suite those variables, if there's an issue. If there's not, where are you right? You take that information, do you then bring the whole team together for them to understand their personality, or hold a workshop? How does that?
Speaker 3:work. It really can be done a couple different ways. We can make it fun because if I lead a workshop, you're going to learn some stuff, you're going to be exposed to some and you're going to laugh. You're going to have a good time. I'm not a lecturer, I'm more of a corporate training entertainer.
Speaker 2:Right, because when I have somebody that walks in and tells me I'm going to tell you what you- may be doing wrong or right, and how you may or may not be delivering to people. It's a little intimidating. So the softness you bring to these workshops, I think really helps.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's discussion-based. Somebody asked me one time how do you describe your training style? I say I say, well, I'm kind of like that soccer coach that throws a ball out there, we'll kick it around. And if somebody kicks it in the street we'll just throw another soccer ball out there, we'll go get the other one later. You know, I want discussion, because discussion, regardless of what personality type, when we have discussion at that kind of almost superficial level, that's the beginning of self-discovery.
Speaker 2:Breaking dice.
Speaker 3:Right, because we can then start pulling out the pieces that mean things to us. The detail-oriented people will start pulling out nuggets of data. The socially-oriented people are going to be pulling out nuggets of influence and involvement and impact.
Speaker 3:So once we understand what each individual's, then we say, okay, now with this knowledge, we're going to teach you how to understand and be able to pick up on the types of others so that you can flex and be a better communicator with them. I'll give you a couple of case in points. I have a former boss who is very much like me. In fact, she was a redhead too.
Speaker 2:Nice, Ooh, scary though right, I know two redheads leading HR.
Speaker 3:She was very much a influencer. Involvement, social justice, what's best for the masses kind of people but she was in support of very technically oriented executives. Now, on her early profiles it very much showed her involvement that I, or sunshine yellow, and that S or earth green type of energy that she led with. Later on we did the assessment again and I began to see shadings in the C or cool blue, which is the detail. Interesting.
Speaker 3:And basically, she learned to flex toward the detail needed to support these engineers based on the result just experience and the information that she had to convey as the leader of hr to people who process things by detail. Okay, now, it's not her base energy, it's not what she naturally leads with from a personality standpoint, but it is a learned behavior to be more effective in her role and it began to show up in her later personality profiles as a tendency to be able to be comfortable in that detail-oriented space. Not her lead, but she was able to come forward. I understand that detail is important. My job before HR was in consumer banking. Oh, very detail-oriented, Very detail-oriented.
Speaker 3:In fact, I had my seventh-grade math teacher met me at a wedding some 15 years after graduation and she looked at me and says I refuse to believe you're employed in a mathematics-related field.
Speaker 2:She saw that in you.
Speaker 3:She did yeah, but at the same time, I understand the importance of it. But I was building a banking career based on relationships. My understanding of the detail was a necessary evil for me to be successful in operations, but the success of my business was based on the fact that I built relationships with my customers.
Speaker 2:Wow. So that's a great point. So we kind of develop our personalities and our styles of how we do things through experience, through different jobs, different positions, different things to try, right? So when you meet with a C-suite and then you understand what their team and how they receive and give information, what is the next step? You're not trying to change the way people think, process or behave. What are you trying to do as the next step?
Speaker 3:Well, the next step is understanding that the fundamentals of leadership and management is nothing more than being the steward of a 360 degree array of relationships.
Speaker 2:Interesting. I love that.
Speaker 3:Okay. To be a good steward of relationships, that means you have to shepherd into each relationship. You have to be the owner of that relationship. Now there's ownership coming from the other side too, and hopefully they're looking at the same need to pay into the relationship.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:So, without saying that, that CEO who really lives in the detail or really lives in that sense of urgency, yeah, they're juggling things all the time.
Speaker 3:They need to be able to flex toward the communication style for those people who are more of the feelers and more of the people that are geared to the other side of the personality complex. They need to slow down when they're talking to their marketers. They understand that time is money and urgency is necessary and that is definitely something they need to convey to their marketers. But they need to slow down and be able to convey to the marketers what their mindset is saying, that they want to convey to their customers that they want to convey to their customers.
Speaker 2:Wow, Okay, so that was a lot to think about in just one moment. It really really matters on the delivery. So once you establish how they're delivering information and receiving information, you see what's working and what's not in terms of work relationships.
Speaker 3:Exactly exactly.
Speaker 2:And what is?
Speaker 3:necessary, and not that all work relationships are broken, but all relationships are dynamic. Exactly Okay. And what? What is necessary and not? Not that all work relationships are broken, but all relationships are dynamic.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:What do we need to do to move our relationship forward? Because as our relationship moves forward, it gets deeper, and as it gets deeper, there's more quality outcome. And ultimately, the quality outcome of better relationships in the workplace shows up in profitability.
Speaker 2:Absolutely and I think throughout time. I mean, it's been very controversial as to men working in a female-dominated workplace and vice versa Females working in male-dominated workplaces as being contentious.
Speaker 3:It has that view Exactly, and you asked me about my experience and how that's paying into this. A lot of people don't realize it, but retail banking is a predominantly female business Interesting. High-end fashion and retailing predominantly female business. Human resources as an industry is a predominantly female industry. I had a tough time breaking into human resources in the early 90s because most people's idea of a recruiter is not 6'3" 250 pounds.
Speaker 2:Right, it's slightly intimidating.
Speaker 3:So you know, I actually had a person that you're just not what I see standing next to the table at a job fair.
Speaker 2:Interesting.
Speaker 3:I had to show my value to contributing to the successful recruitment of the organization and strategic planning of staffing before I was actually allowed into the little sorority.
Speaker 2:Wow, and had you had you the sorority, I love it. Had you understood that you needed to make those changes ahead of time, when you were onboarding, or when you're first going into your very first corporate position, would it have changed the dynamic of your work and home life, that balance and your dynamic with different job positions? Would you have stayed in positions longer? Would you have moved on? Does it make you question those things?
Speaker 3:I'm not sure it makes it me question it my things. I think it makes me look back and say, boy, if I had known then what I know now, I might not have had to clear some hurdles. But that's why as? My life verse says I push back and push forward to what I'm called to, by forgetting what's behind. And my mindset has always been and that's the name of my company is p314, which is philippians 3 14. My life verse is Philippians 3, 12 through 14. Okay.
Speaker 3:Where, basically, paul says I've not already obtained it, but what I am doing is I'm striving forward toward it. I forget what's behind and move forward to that to which I've been called through Christ Jesus. Um, that's the Dan Dalton paraphrase. Okay, I love it. But and what I mean by that is that I've I learned from the setbacks. Take those setbacks long enough to learn what I need to do differently. That third question of the triad what's working? Where am I getting stuck? What do I need to do differently? Yeah.
Speaker 3:Strive forward, because we're all a work in process, you know absolutely um I don't, and I think in the lifespan of an organization it's never done it's.
Speaker 2:It's always dynamic absolutely in any business you have. I mean the. The atma view of build launch, grow scale methodology In early stages of business communication breakdowns can stall that growth phase of your business. You can stall out, would you agree?
Speaker 3:Agreed. I've had to coach a lot of managers in my career that their idea of accelerated coaching or continued development is just give it to them louder and dirtier.
Speaker 2:I know a lot of managers in every industry that I mean. That's how we were taught some people right and with your background in history, you're leaning into what you know how to do and that's relationships it seems like Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 3:I firmly believe that we're all stewards of relationships, not just in the workplace but in our personal lives as well, and the same concepts that we teach in the workplace can transition into our real lives. Thus the focus that I have on young people kind of the other half of my business is wanting to focus on helping individuals that are 15 to 22 years of age kind of get ready for those adult decisions that are coming at them at 100 miles an hour.
Speaker 2:Man, there's so many adult decisions. You're referencing their view on stepping away from their parents and into the world.
Speaker 3:Exactly Okay.
Speaker 2:And I was actually going to ask about that. We're seasoned professionals. We could go to different industries and get hired, but for these young adults that are trying to figure out where they want to go, how does understanding what you do and how does what you do help them in their life journey?
Speaker 3:Well, let me start by going back a little bit, just sort of kind of a before and after picture. When you and I were growing up, we went to school and somewhere in high school they handed us.
Speaker 3:We went to school and somewhere in high school they handed us Beowulf or they handed us the Iliad or Canterbury Tales and said here, read this book and in three weeks you have to write a report on it. And what did we do? We do, we went home and if we were diligent to our studies, we read the book Right, or those of us who cut corners, we might have gotten things called cliff notes. I remember those.
Speaker 3:Submerges of books you know, and at the end of the day we sat down at a typewriter and banged out, keystroke by key keystroke, a paper on that book. What's done today?
Speaker 2:Not that.
Speaker 3:Hey chat.
Speaker 2:AI.
Speaker 3:Yeah, give me the summary of the Iliad Right. And what I have found and this is kind of what my research has done is we have a lot of folks, young people, that are reaching the end of the stage in high school and going, okay, now what?
Speaker 2:Right, peer orientation is such a big thing. Now how do they know where to go when their peers aren't around?
Speaker 3:Exactly. Or they collect a batch of 10 10 second sound bites and think they're informed, or they've read a two-page summary and they've got 15 bullet points that think that they understand that book and consequently they even have ai help them write the papers. So it's not necessarily a quality quantity of life experience, but I do think that the immediacy that young people take in information now it doesn't have that opportunity to just sort of get into their soul and percolate Absolutely have that opportunity to just sort of get into their soul and percolate absolutely and become a, a founding value that is of substance.
Speaker 3:I was working with somebody not long ago and they they said boy dan, you really got a lot of wisdom. I said, no, I don't. I've got a lot of experience. You know a lot of what I've learned is through making mistakes and I tell them I said a lot of experience. You know, a lot of what I've learned is through making mistakes, and I tell them I said a lot of what I've learned is stepping in stuff and having to clean my boots.
Speaker 2:We've all been there, right? That's so interesting. So you're focusing on these young adults. How are you approaching them and their journey? Because, to your point, it's an AI-driven world, it's a digital world. We want everything right now, right here, and most of the time we can get that right the the younger, especially a younger generation, coming up with AI. So why is it so important that they understand their personality? Because I think a lot of young adults think they know who they are, but when you step into a corporate environment or or try to figure out which environment you want to navigate to, they realize they don't really know what they want or where they're going. So how do you walk us through that customer journey when it comes to a young adult?
Speaker 3:Well, some of the tools that I use gear toward and let me back up just a little bit more Personality is set in most people somewhere in our mid teens.
Speaker 2:Interesting.
Speaker 3:Okay. The rest of our social makeup, our emotional intelligence and our our intellectual intelligence doesn't really peak until much later in life. Okay. And sorry guys, for us it's not even then.
Speaker 2:Take what you can.
Speaker 3:Exactly, but personality profiles are pretty much set as to how we prefer to respond. Now as we said before, it does change and evolve over time, but it's still going to be the primary focuses of the initial response to stimulus at about 15 years of age. The same algorithms that help us with the personality profiling tools can also help show what career areas we would be most apt to be successful in.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:So the same kind of assessment that I would put a job description through to tell a hiring manager say you really want to look for somebody with these attributes, can tell a 17 year old here is where your personality is geared to thrive. Oh, wow. And so if you are of a certain type of personality or leaning toward dominance in a certain area, then you might not necessarily be apt to be successful in a career field that draws on the opposite side of personality.
Speaker 2:That's a great point. So you're telling me that my dad's extroverted dominant energy and his position he looked for may not be right for me. This is how some people can view this which, in turn, if you're like maybe a family member of mine, you go to college thinking you want to be one thing your whole life right, and then you realize very quickly, through interaction and understanding, that you don't want to be in that career anymore, after your parents have paid a hefty tuition.
Speaker 3:Exactly, and that's, that's one of the value propositions that I, that I bring to a family that in fact I've, I've, I've done some work with some young people. There's one family that I can call recall that 15 year old daughter, very much an involved, oriented person. I've known, I've known this child since she was a baby and she is focused on involvement. She is a member of the athlete one of the athletic teams in her school. She is a member of the choir, she is a leader of just social groups. She is involved and her personality type just pointed that out. Her dad on the other on the other side, is very detail oriented, very focused, and I don't mean to cast dispersions on everything, but the way that I describe some of the people who lead with that c or cool blue energy is life, only has meaning, if I can put it in Excel.
Speaker 2:You know what?
Speaker 3:And that's not a bad thing, it's not because, thank goodness for the people who focus on the detail, yes, you know, to that sixth and seventh decimal point, because you know you, you want that in your surgeon right.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. If you're performing surgery on my brain or anything, I want you to be that person.
Speaker 3:So I was debriefing with this young lady and helping her, and she was having aha moment after aha moment. Yes, this, this, I've felt this forever. Yes, this, I've got to be involved. And as I was debriefing and of course, her parents were there too, and I could see just in the look on her dad's face that he was planning, he was charting, and I stopped off and I said what are you doing right now?
Speaker 3:I said, what are you thinking right now? And he says, oh, I'm thinking that we've got to get scheduled, we've got to get her involvement organized. We've got to get scheduled, we've got it. We've got to get her her involvement organized. We've got to, we've got to get her calendar in order and we, you know, we've got to make sure that she's got time allocated to these things that she wants to be involved with so she could be, you know. And I said, don't, her involvement is creatively driven. You cannot cram creativity into a calendar.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:Don't try to structure that personality profile. That is exactly the opposite of structure.
Speaker 2:So in that situation, for example, you didn't have to give the father or the mother a personality walkthrough or information to understand them. You're trying to understand the young adult and then help the family understand what would benefit them most based on that result.
Speaker 3:Is that correct? And I've come down to two kind of selling points. If you will right, if I help a family just improve their communication between them and their teenager, that's a pretty good win man but if that same family can prevent one changed major and two semesters that don't have to be repeated. Life-changing money, guys and all of a sudden, that little bit of time, that little bit of money that they spent with me saved them a great deal of money and time in their child's education.
Speaker 2:And that is the reason what you do in this business is so important to every aspect of life really, because I know, once I started understanding what you do and how you do it, my interaction with my team is better and also you take it home with you oh, absolutely your interaction with your family and your children and you think children are carbon copies of you.
Speaker 2:They're not understanding that really dives into the rest of your life, but primarily your income is the most important and for business owners, your bottom line right at the end of your life. But primarily, your income is the most important and for business owners, your bottom line at the end of the day is the most important. So you coming in and giving statistics as to how this will benefit a business would be invaluable to me as a business owner. Would you say?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I mean, the one commodity that we all have the same amount of, regardless of our income, regardless of our business, is that we're all given 24 hours in a day. If you can utilize that time more effectively by improving communication, by eliminating those times when we had to circle back on understanding a given bullet point, then productivity is going to increase. And usually in most businesses, if productivity is better, efficiency is improved, the bottom line is going to improve as well.
Speaker 2:It's a trickle effect and you're not coming in to tell them hey, you're doing this wrong. Your demeanor is a no-judgment zone.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, because you know who am I to judge anyone's personality. I have God-wired anybody.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And then what you do with the information and the coursework that you give to these teams is really, at the end of the day, a workshop setting, would you say.
Speaker 3:It is. It is the follow-up stuff. After we debrief with the personality profile and everybody kind of understands who they are and how they're wired and how they need to flex to better interrelate with their coworkers and in their organization, then we follow it up with a little bit more honing of the tools, such as one of the books that I work with is John Maxwell's book called Everyone Communicates but Few Connect. Interesting.
Speaker 3:We can all communicate. We're communicating right now, but if you walk away and something we discussed hits you at three o'clock this afternoon and it all of a sudden becomes something you're pondering on, then we went beyond communicating when we made a connection okay so when we have that kind of level of communication in the workplace then instructions and expected deliverables become a lot more clear and understood. Therefore, the execution of those deliverables is going to be much more efficient.
Speaker 2:Wow, it's almost a proven process. I know that once I learned how to communicate with my boss, my life felt a lot happier at the end of the day. Right, I mean, you can see it from all perspectives. In a small business or a startup especially, I truly believe you are the counter to AI. Ai is very analytical. It's going to give you all of the information directly. You are the AI of personalities. You're helping people figure out how to communicate effectively to, in turn, increase their bottom line.
Speaker 3:Exactly and just like AI, what I help you to understand needs to be massaged. It needs to be be reviewed, perfected into how you're going to utilize it. I mean the whole I, the every concept of ai that I have studied thus far. My study of ai is not that in depth yet. Is that?
Speaker 3:don't just trust the output go and double check the output, edit as you see fit to make it more precise and don't see fit to make it more precise and don't and please understand that ai can hallucinate, that ai makes stuff up sometimes. That has to be looked out for, uh, as you're reviewing. So the same thing with with what I'm teaching. These are the fundamentals. You know, when I was growing up, I played baseball. I can field a ground ball, I can throw the ball, I can hit the ball, but I can't do it as well as Corey Seeger. So we all started with the same fundamentals, but he was able to incorporate the fundamentals at a higher level than I was. The same thing happens here. These are communication and relationship management fundamentals. Each of us are going to be able to master it and put it into play at different levels, but anything that is beyond where I am today gets better tomorrow, is going to be an improvement across the board for your personnel and, ultimately, for your organization.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, because when you go for young adults, when you get into that career environment and when you're a employee or a c-suite, when you get into that atmosphere, you're not always going to have your AI with you. You're not going to always have your AI to give you the answer. So you really have to lean on that relationship with your team, with your customer, with your client. And as AI progresses and people are starting to realize, oh, that's AI, that's AI, that's not really you, that yearn for relationship and connection, it seems like it would grow more and more.
Speaker 3:It all comes down to, every one of us in our personal lives and our professional lives will be thrust into a situation where we have to go back to fundamentals.
Speaker 2:And so you coming into these businesses is teaching these teams, whether they stay with you, whether you stay the owner of this company or decide to start a new company. This is life-changing information for you.
Speaker 3:It could be. It could be.
Speaker 2:So you're really doing a service to yourself and everyone else on the team, would you say?
Speaker 3:I hope so. That's the objective.
Speaker 2:Wow. So, to kind of wrap things up, we're focusing on small businesses and teams. You're focusing on the young adults going into college and helping those families. Are there any other key points that you'd like to dive into in the future that you're doing now that maybe would have some interest to some of our listeners?
Speaker 3:you know, uh, just to kind of restate, what we started at the outset is that self-awareness is the first step towards self-improvement improvement. And that is a mantra that can personally, spiritually, professionally, you know, at some point in time you've got to take a good, honest, inward look to say this is where I am right now, because if you don't have that first data point, you really have no solid reference on how to measure improvement.
Speaker 3:And, at the end of the day, dan, I feel like you're going to learn it either way, it's just going to take more time, right, and you're not going to be able to go back and actually measure or appreciate the quality of the growth if you cannot measure it oh, that's a wonderful point to make and a realization I hadn't thought about recently at all.
Speaker 2:Dan, can I ask you um how long? If I'm a business owner, would you say your course or your commitment to each business lasts, is it a week, a month, six months?
Speaker 3:Well, I can kind of customize it Now. As far as completion of the coursework, yeah, we could do it in a weekend.
Speaker 2:Really so. You're willing to go to these businesses and do team development on the weekends Of?
Speaker 3:course, or we could do it in half-day sessions or a bunch of you know. It's customizable because, again it each, each individual relationship is its own entity, so I can scale it to fit what best fits the organization's needs and the individuals within that organization and their needs.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you're really customizable, which is how I mean. It would be hard for you not to be in this business, right? So in that commitment to you, you're really going in as a consultation and then you're gauging what they need. Are you giving these business owners a perspective of how long you'll be with them, because I don't ever want you to leave our workplace networking events? You are invaluable to the, the people around you in any situation, it seems like. So how long do you commit yourselves and about how long does it take for you to see an actual change in productivity?
Speaker 3:That's a. That's a tough question. Um, I'm not sure I could actually give a. Uh, just a quantified answer as a whole. Um, in some cases it may not be very long. It may. We just deliver the profiles and we work on how to integrate them and we go on from there.
Speaker 3:Okay files and we work on how to integrate them and we go on from there. Okay, if we need further communication training or if we need team effectiveness training, you know, if we need, you know, any other kind of development on, you know, just leadership itself, then we can certainly do that. But hopefully through the interactive process of understanding each individual's personality and the improvement of the communication, decision making and just conveyance of information, then you know, we can just sort of see from there as to what else is necessary right.
Speaker 2:so you give everyone an option they can take or leave with what information. They have right, Very a la carte, I love that You're doing a lot of networking events and a lot of speaking events as well. I'm assuming at those events you give key points and takeaways for business owners and young adults. Can you give us a couple of those takeaways, maybe for our audience to hear what could they do to make things more effective right now?
Speaker 3:Well, I'm going to shamelessly steal some stuff here.
Speaker 2:Go ahead, you know.
Speaker 3:John Maxwell says you have to know yourself to grow yourself. Okay, but at the same time, growth requires an investment. You've got to to invest your in yourself and you've got to focus, you know and see value in what you put in, as to what you're going to get out or what you're going to put into the organization that the organization can can receive as part of that input and then secondly, just to realize that it's never ending.
Speaker 3:I love because when I was growing up I did not really enjoy reading as a hobby. I enjoyed movies and TV. Consequently, in my training method I often quote movies and television shows with things that I think are apropos. Right In the Shawshank Redemption. Andy Dufresne has a line in there and it says you got to get busy living or get busy dying. And what I take from that? Not the finality of life.
Speaker 3:Right and what I take from that not the finality of life, but if you get busy living, you have to understand it's a continuous process. We all change. We all change, we all grow. We all have experiences that change our filter on a certain aspect that we've looked at of life. You never get to a point if you get to a point where you think you've made it and you don't need to put in any more, that's when, to borrow the phrase, you get busy dying. Absolutely.
Speaker 3:Because lack of growth is the beginning of deterioration, so it's ongoing. So for an organization, if we did a personality profile and got everybody fired up and it was actually integrated into process and evaluations and just the lifeblood, then perhaps we'd come back a year later and say, okay, how has it changed your values? Have the values of your organization changed?
Speaker 3:because of this Are the values incorporated into your business. Are you living out your values? If I found out that your values were a certain thing later, would I be surprised by what I see you living. I heard a saying once that if someone who's known you forever later found out that you were a believer, would they be surprised. So what is my lifestyle? Is my persona matching what I espouse my values to?
Speaker 3:be, Organizations have values. They need to be operating in a way that those values come out in the way that they operate and they do business.
Speaker 2:And maybe even just establishing values, because you can be a business for a long time and just have a routine and a method right. And so maybe it's time, and I definitely think it's a day and age, where we really need to step back and say, okay, who are we?
Speaker 3:Who are we as an organization?
Speaker 2:And you're really going to help these businesses and these young adults figure that out. You're giving them an edge that we never had.
Speaker 3:Yeah, to own their values, own who they are, because they understand just exactly how they respond to life from a personality standpoint Helps establish their values and that gives you a guideline by which to behave. Same thing in business. I'm asked all the time how do you manage a bad attitude? Well, first of all, you have to have an established standard by which you're measuring that attitude, to label it as bad, because if you don't, then it's just your opinion and I can't go into litigation and just litigate your opinion I have to have a violation of an established standard I think we need to put that one on repeat to really understand it.
Speaker 2:that's. Those are takeaways, dan. Thank you so much, and thank you for taking the opportunity to take what you've learned in your career and really help people. At the end of the day, that's what you're doing. You're helping people and you're wanting to make everyone around you better. That's the goal. Thank you, dan, and I cannot wait to see what you've done with our business in the next year.
Speaker 3:Thanks Dori.
Speaker 2:To everyone out there who's listening. If this hit a nerve with you or ring a bell. If you're trying to grow in your business and you really want to optimize how you grow efficiently, give Dan a call or reach out to me directly and I'll connect you with him Until next time. Thank you for joining us.