The Business Sergeant's Playbook: Chris Hallberg on Leadership, Accountability, and Success

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Living the Dream Podcast with Curveball. If you believe, you can achieve. Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast. I interview a guest that he motivated and inspired. No, there's a matter. So Chris, thank you for joining me. Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Well, uh, let's see. Uh husband of uh 28, pushing 29 years, father to two boys, uh 21 and 18, uh, lifelong learner, uh, wooden spoon survivor. Uh let's see here. Um I learned how to lead, manage, and galvanize teams in the military. Always was a leader, always volunteered for stuff, uh, big personality, uh, short attention span. I spent the majority of my schooling career in the hallway. Uh, usually there's a deal between the teacher and me, like, hey, just keep it light and we'll give you that C and keep it keep it real. And a few of them uh didn't appreciate my uh uh social butterfly tendencies. And a few of them told me, hey, Chris, you need to learn how to be quiet. No one's gonna pay you to talk all day. So you just need to hush and and follow the rules. And and that didn't that didn't sit well with me. But uh uh as a young man, I needed some structure in my life, and I was able to influence a lot of things, but like the army, you're not changing the army by one being one private. So I kind of met my match there and uh learned how to follow rules, um, serve a higher power, be a good teammate, and understand very quickly there's always someone bigger, faster, better. Uh, so your job is just not to be the slowest. And that really changed me. And then after my nine-year uh part-time military career as the National Guard military police sergeant, that whole time, full time, I worked in a super maximum security prison, five stories underground. That's an interesting job for a 20-year-old. And by 23, I was transferred to a medium security facility to make sergeant, uh, which was another challenge, you know, managing uh officers in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. So I took that fired up leadership style that I learned in the military and brought that into the civilian business world. And uh, unless an impersonal branding, Curtis uh became the business sergeant. So people knew exactly what they were gonna get when they ring me up. Um, they're not hiring the business sergeant to tiptoe around the tulips, they're hiring the business sergeant to come in and call balls and strikes and uh point out uh the gap and talk about how we're gonna gain uh some traction on that. And uh that is a short, but I think pretty comprehensive version of how I'm here today. So no one told me I couldn't be a fired up military-style leader in the civilian business world. I just did it. And turns out there's uh there's a there's a market for straight shooting, you know, uh mentors who care a lot about the greater good and getting other people to lean into that uh military team building mindset has has proven to be very successful um almost 200 times now.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

Well, I'll tell you, uh I said this in the green room, but I'll say it on air. Thank you for your service. Let's talk about um when when you built a what winning company that doing one of the uh most uh tough economic pairs in recent history. Talk about that and talk about uh what business decisions and leadership decisions mattered when pressure was the highest.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Um well this was uh back in uh get my numbers right here, 2009 to 2011-12 air uh time frame. So that was uh during the Great Recession, and uh I created uh from scratch an energy efficient remodeling business. So at the time there were some tax credits, and uh seeing we go to the Middle East all the time for oil, uh why don't we just be uh more miserly in our consumption? So my my thesis was to not just do remodeling, do it with ultra-efficient products that qualify highly for those tax credits. And this was in Minneapolis, St. Paul. And if you've ever been there in February, you would appreciate some more, you know, higher insulation windows or insulation or energy audits or air ceiling because a lot of the homes there were post-World War II, and we literally took newspapers from 1947 out of the walls and replaced that with uh cellulose insulation. So it was kind of neat to read some of those newspaper articles, but uh you need a little bit more than some crumpled up newspaper in those walls. Uh so what we did is we made the homes more sustainable, uh way more energy efficient, um, use the tax credits to lower the investment and the increased energy savings to accelerate the ROI. Uh what was different about us being, you know, a number one dealer in our first six months of being a business and businesses that had been around for generations going out of business is we had the leads. And uh the quick story on how we had leads and no one else did is we just looked at marketing from a different perspective. And uh I partnered with a city leader for the Greenpeace Corporation. So I found a bunch of people that were wildly crazy and passionate about the environment and let them know that this is kind of the greenest thing out there is conservation. And if they were into saving energy and keeping carbon down, then we needed to get all these leaker homes to be more efficient. They agreed, and they were out knocking on doors in Minneapolis in the dark, in the winter, in the cold. Uh, and we went out to certain affluent neighborhoods and had a very compelling presentation, and we had plenty of opportunities. And uh we had a solution, it made sense, and uh, we scaled that to several million dollars uh just in the first year, and then uh sold the concern just a few short years later. And uh the business that uh bought it basically copied my entire marketing sales and um installation template and uh shared that with their dealer base. So it was uh it was a great sale and uh had uh you know royalties for 10 years after. So it was the gift that kept on giving. It was a it was a beautiful, beautiful situation.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Well, after working with more than 100 leadership teams, what is the most common blind spot that you see that keep good leaders from becoming great leaders?

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Um I would say um trying to fix other human beings would be my answer, hanging on to the wrong folks for too long, waiting for something to change over many quarters, many years, sometimes decades. And the the realization is our job as leaders is to spot folks that have what we need, that were raised right, and to spot folks um that are victims, uh, that it's somebody else's fault and they don't take accountability. So my advice to anyone listening that owns a business or is a leader is to find folks that have found the top 20% two or three times earlier in life. Doesn't matter what it is, I don't care if you're the number one fry maker at McDonald's two years in a row, that counts. And when people can find the winner's circle on their own, they're very likely to find it again with you. If someone has a bedroom full of eighth place trophies, that's about what you can expect uh at your organization as well.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

Well, I know many organizations struggle with cultures, so talk about what separates a culture that people tolerate from a culture that people genuin genuinely want to be a part of.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Yeah, it's that goes back to my last comment. When the leadership team defines we are special, we are elite, we are striving to be our best, and we are looking for like-minded folks who want to go on a journey to greatness. So the average American worker uh, you know, does about the minimum necessary not to get fired every two weeks when payroll comes around. And uh that's why there's TV shows about the office, Curtis, because that stuff's funny. Unless you're a character and you report to Dwight Schroot or Michael Scott or one of these other uh business leaders who who don't have it all together. So uh a hallmark of a great business is or a great elite team or a great military unit or you know, anything that is we'll call top 20%, is those organizations are slow to hire and quick to fire. And most other organizations are very quick to hire and very slow to hire. That's why when you head out to the DMV, you're not expecting a world-class customer service experience.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Well, I know you've you've helped organizations win uh employee engagement award. So so talk about what can leaders do starting tomorrow to help increase employee engagement without increasing the budget.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Well, just setting that high standard, communicating it regularly, and uh removing people that clearly don't share that mindset. So first thing you do is you gotta you gotta commit to being great, and then you have to create a vision, uh, just a two-page business plan, uh, you know, not a 14, 18-page summary, but one piece of paper or two pieces of paper at max that can explain who we are, why we exist, uh, what we do, who we do it with, how much we want to do it by three-year, one year, quarterly, and you know, what would be those long-term issues. I just listed the eight questions on the two-page document for the EOS VTO or vision traction organizer. And EOS or the entrepreneurial operating system is a set of business tools as a coach that I use uh and I've implemented EOS uh for well over a decade, and it's a highly effective program. So whether you're a little company or a billion-dollar company, um you can just simply follow that that that overlay, that process, put all your stuff in those neat little boxes, those compartments, and then you run it on a piece of software like uh Go expand, for instance, is a software tool that I have to help companies just put it all in the app. And what's in there is what we're committing to. What's not in there is what we're not thinking about. We're not interested in that. And many people try to boil the ocean, Curtis, and we can get five or six gallons rolling, and that's hard to do. Um, you know, a small pot on the stove of hot dogs takes a while, but the ocean, like, don't try. It ain't gonna work. So it just allows us to be very specific in what's important and what's not. And if we stop worrying about the things that are not important, we can take that excess capacity and put it into the things that are important. So you've got to have a system and you got to have folks that are willing to follow it, and you got to be willing to move them on if they're not. And that right there uh are the magic ingredients to have a company that has 94% employee engagement and wins those best places to work awards. And generally, those companies have a waiting list of work there to have, in some cases, twice or more the profit, and uh very little turnover, a lot of harmony, a lot of fun. And uh that's what I help companies do. I help good companies become great companies, great companies become exceptional companies, and help exceptional companies become world class. So wherever you're at, the idea is to go a notch or two above, and um it's a proven process and has about an 85% success rate. And the only time it doesn't work is because we've got an owner who's in it for them, not for the team, or they're not willing to speak the truth. They're gonna be kind, they're gonna be nice instead of kind, or you know, they lack the commitment and the resolve to get to the other side. Um, so you know, I like to do a good job on the front side of weeding those folks out. And for those that want to take the journey, it's there for you. Uh, but it ain't easy because we're talking about people. It might be simple, the plan we go through, uh, but it's not easy but because it requires a lot of these difficult human conversations, and not everyone's willing to be open and honest and vulnerable and speak the truth, especially around the boss.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

Well, talk about your work with uh helping develop uh veterans in into leadership roles and and also talk about the uh unique leadership skills that veterans possess that businesses often overlook.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

Oh yeah, that's that's uh that's a passion of mine for sure. Could could definitely you know talk about that stuff for for days. And and essentially at the end of the day, um there is a hidden value in veterans, right? Because, you know, um organizational challenges uh most companies have is a lack of accountability and ownership, uh poor communication between teams, uh lots of leadership gaps. A lot of time, hey you, you know how to do this? Not really. Well, you're the senior person, so poof, you're the manager. So we have a lot of disengagement and low morale, uh slow uh execution, missed deadlines, um, difficulty adapting to change, weak talent pipelines, uh high turnover, that kind of stuff. And basically, if uh if most businesses have a lack of ownership, veterans are gonna have extreme accountability. Early is on time, on time is late. If we have poor communication, veterans bring clear, concise communication because they're used to having lives uh depend on that clear, concise communication. So if we normally deal with leadership shortages, now we have proven leadership experience. You know, some special forces operator who retires and wants to go lead in the civilian business world might have four or five million dollars spent on their project management, leadership, uh, you know, network building type skills. And these folks don't cost much more than regular folks do. And imagine someone with 20 years of elite level selection being selected out of a thousand people a thousand times, uh, progressing through those ranks in the highest competitive environment on the planet, and then bringing all those skills to you on day one. The point being, Curtis, is you know, when I talk to a CEO, I say, listen, our people, unless you're splitting atoms, molecular biology, neurosurgery, yeah, uh, we're not going to learn that at a quarter or two, but 90% of all business skills can be learned in a quarter or two by a world-class leader. And my point is, whoever their best leader is at the company wouldn't survive a weekend uh with one of our guys. So it's much easier to take a world-class leader and then train them what the business does than it is to take someone with many years of business experience and then train them to be a world-class leader. So that's the big value add. You need to stop uh training leaders and start hiring them because you know, 20 years and millions of dollars worth of training, um, you ain't got that time and you ain't got that money to give that level of training to your people. So sprinkling a few business sergeants in an organization is a great way to get that halo effect, that ripple effect. And when we put a world-class operator into a business, this centrifugal ring of awesome, like the ripples in a pond, everyone around that person just gets better and better. And people think, oh, a business sergeant, I don't want to yelling or push-ups at my business. No, that's a drill sergeant. That's how you take teenagers and turn them into soldiers. Um, and and that's a process to take somebody through that, which includes breaking people down and building them back up. A team sergeant, a a officer, uh experienced leader of of other military folks for many years, um, is is a whole nother level of relationships and accountability and discipline and um training and lifelong learning. And you know, they've also been tested in the toughest places. So when you've been tested a thousand times and you come up thumbs up, aces, green, whatever, um your past performance is a very good uh indicator of future performance. So it's really just that simple. And uh um you might need one at your company, you might need five. But uh helping with communication and leadership and uh execution are are only gonna help a business, and uh it's not easy to do these things. So when you have somebody at that level of mastery, uh they make hard things look easy.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

Well, what what is one leadership lesson that you believed in strongly, but later on as experience proved that it was wrong.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

Yeah, the because I said so, focusing just on maybe rank or title, and that's a transferable thing from the military. So a lot of times there'd be a senior leader come in and say what they had to say, they'd turn around and everyone would sneer, snicker, or make jokes. And uh that's a respect thing. You can have the rank, um, but you need to earn the respect. So I I like to see a commander or a senior enlisted advisor out working a broom or you know, uh picking up trash with the soldiers, and and those are the leaders that people respect, uh, not someone who has a perfect uniform and you know complains about what the work you've done while you're covered in it. And and uh I think I think it's not just about rank, uh it's about reputation, it's about rank and reputation. And uh that took a while to figure out, but you know, after getting several examples of stellar leadership and wanting to emulate that at the same time, there's just as many, perhaps even more examples of poor leadership. And when you experience, you kind of have that. I'm never gonna do that when I'm a leader. So knowing your reputation precedes you uh in front of you, about six feet in front of you is your reputation, and it's also stays in the room uh six feet behind you. So I think being mindful of that early on uh would serve people well.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Well, since you've uh seen businesses fail and succeed from the inside, can you share a moment where you saw a business change their trajectory by changing their leadership approach?

SPEAKER_01 22:05

Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's essentially uh exactly what I do is um you know, I rarely get the calls to say, hey, everything's awesome here, but we're curious if there's another level, if there's a fifth level of awesome. Uh usually when I'm coming in, like uh the business has hit a ceiling, you know, operationally, human capital-wise, market-wise. Um a lot of people are you know victims of their own success. Um, they lack the simplicity in the process uh to be scalable. There's a lot of gray. And when we just have black and white, you know, all the color, none of the color, that's really simple. That gray uh, you know, in the Venn diagram between those two, um that's where great businesses go to die. Complexity. Uh you can't really scale complexity, but you can scale the heck out of simplicity. So really getting rid of all the unnecessary SKUs, uh excess workflows, uh really simplifying the operating environment, giving parameters to folks, and then enabling them, get it getting them everything they need to be successful, and then getting the heck out of their way. So that that is the the big thing uh that I get brought in to do. And when you simplify your business. And you put the right people in the right seats and you have uh systems in place, it becomes very methodical. Uh the flywheel starts to spin and things actually get easier. So a little bit of investment of time, uh, and that usually involves exiting, you know, maybe 20, 30% of the leadership team and 30, 40% of the middle managers, uh, because they're actually working against the vision. And uh when we remove those folks that would rather do it another way and we replace them with folks that are happy to be here and do it this way, then we remove a lot of that complexity. Think of it this way, Curtis. If you had two people next to each other and in a canoe and one was facing one way and one was facing the other way, and you told them to row, there'd be a lot of splashing, but the boat really wouldn't be going anywhere because they're working against each other. Now you tell the one of them to turn around and start rowing, and that canoe just takes right off. So it's just about getting everybody rowing uh in the same direction uh during during that same beat. And when that happens, these these boats go real fast on the water.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Well, when people look back on your career years from now, what leadership principle or legacy do you hope they'll remember the most?

SPEAKER_01 24:37

Uh that I believed in them and uh they got to believe in themselves through that, building confidence. Um, a lot of folks just need to have the mindset that we're gonna make this happen. And uh if 80% of the thoughts between your ears on a day-to-day basis are generally negative, our job is to you know call out those 80%, you know, give them a Chuck Norris throat punch and uh turn it into a positive thought, say it out loud, and then move up move about your day because your thoughts become your your words, your words become your actions, and your actions become your being. So it starts with uh getting rid of that stinking thinking and looking at things as a positive. Um, your attitude is one of the very few things in in life you actually control. Uh control by in general is a is is an illusion. Um you can't really control people. You can create something and then curate a team who naturally wants to do that, and that doesn't require motivating them or managing them or threatening them or you know, overcompensating them. It's just a puzzle piece that fits in nice. And when you get folks that really don't care, uh they're not interested, and uh they're mercenary, uh, then it's very difficult to build an elite team with people that don't want to come to practice. So the very best athletes, right? You take like basketball, Steph Curry, like one of the best shooters ever. That guy's shooting like hundreds of shots before the game, and many times if he didn't like it rolled off his fingers, he's gonna shoot a couple hundred baskets after the game. And uh whoever's first in and last out for practice is probably gonna be the captain at some point because they're setting that example for everyone else. So I think making the decision and and following through.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

Tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

Well, I think this uh go expand software is really interesting. Uh we have a EOS version for teams that are all running, running on the US or plan to, and then we have a Go Expand Universal where you know you can put your you can name your own things and and set up the app uh to conform to your existing systems, uh, if that's what you prefer. And what I find is is if people are allowed to fail quietly in the dark, silently, uh they'll probably engage in that behavior. So once your numbers are semi-public and the expectations are there, and then there's a a software that aligns everybody, synchronizes everybody, we can reward and recognize each other, we can you know run our meetings and the AI just listens to the conversation. If you take a task or a to-do, it just gives it to you. And uh if people aren't following through with their promises, the app docs them. And when you know, green is good, uh, red is bad. And when you when you agree to be in the green and the app tracks when you're not, um it really allows uh the right conversations at the right time. And you shouldn't be waiting every 90 days or every year to review your folks. We should have a live real-time feedback loop of everyone's performance, everyone's alignment, and everyone's engagement. And that application at goexpand.com uh just spells it out for you, gives you a number. And you would like that to be a high number, like 90%, uh, not a low number like 20, 30 percent. So uh it's it's just a way to be very clear with who's actually the right person in the right seat and who's identifying uh as the right person in the right seat. And when you document everything and we're playing the great game of business like Moneyball, right? Brad Pitt and Jonah uh Jonah Hill, uh Moneyball is a movie about statistics and using data uh to draft and curate a baseball team. And the year they did that with the Oakland A's, they won. And essentially the following year, every other team adopted that mindset. So it's kind of like Moneyball for Business, is the way I like to describe it, Curtis. And then the veteran-powered recruiting company is where we take those veterans just getting out, been out for a minute, or been out for almost 30 years, like me, and we give them a course. Uh, so if any veterans are listening, then go to businesssargeant.com, B-I-Z-S-G-T.com, and they're welcome to join the course for free. No charge to veterans. We don't charge veterans for anything. Uh the companies we place them in pay us a contingent uh placement fee like any other recruiter, uh, but all of our candidates got the leadership thing in spades. We we really bring that. And uh um and then EOS coaching, EOSworldwide uh.com slash Chris Hallberg. And then ultimately, Curtis, I'd love for your listeners to follow me and uh interact with me on LinkedIn. Uh, I'll be definitely sharing uh this episode there.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

All right. We'll close us out with some final thoughts, maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on, or any final thoughts you have for the listeners.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

Um I don't nothing comes to mind out the top of my head, but if I was gonna leave somebody with a parting thought, it would be um you can't fly with eagles if you hang out with turkeys. And I think that's a Zig Ziggler quote from many years ago. Um so asking yourself, you know, you are basically the composite of the five people you spend the most time with. And if your company is small and you just have one or two people that ain't right, that's really making it difficult for everybody else. So just look around you and uh be very careful who you spend your time with, your energy with. And um if you're not pinching yourself, that I'm so lucky to have this person in my life or this person on my team or this customer that I want you to keep going until you know most of your life is a pinch me moment because um the dream usually starts with a nightmare and and you got to get through the tough part, but it's so worth it, would be my parting advice. It's hard, but it's so beautiful on the other side. Once you get there, you wish you took the journey a little bit earlier. So I I guess I'll leave them with that curse.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

There you go, ladies and gentlemen. So you know, if you're a leader or trying to be a leader, please keep up with everything that the uh the business sergeant is up to. Definitely check out that Go Expand software. Sounds like some pretty neat stuff, and uh wish more companies would adapt that. So you could uh get your review. Like you say, you don't have to wait 90 days or a year to uh to get your review, but follow rate review, share this episode to as many people as possible. Okay, Chris all in and uh keep up whatever day that is up to, and also to keep up whatever day that Living the Dream Podcast is up to, visit www.curveball337.com and please share that website and the show to everybody that you know. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. Once again, Chris, thank you for your service and thank you for all that you're doing to help the leaders and thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_01 32:01

My pleasure, Curtis, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, visit w dot curveball three three seven dot com. Until next time, keep living the dream