Steve Brown 0:00
Loyd Brown. Welcome to the ROI online podcast.
Lloyd Brown 0:04
Thank you, Steve. exciting to be here, because I've been watching you do this almost from day one.
Steve Brown 0:12
Yeah, so I'm, I'm kind of getting good at you hope that after 107 episode, you get the hang of things.
Lloyd Brown 0:19
What they say is repetition makes you unconsciously competent, right? Yeah,
Steve Brown 0:23
yeah. Well, I'm proud to have you, Lloyd, you're my, you're, you've been a client, you're a friend. You're a confidant. And now you're an author. And today we're going to talk about your book, refined by failure, breaking rules and getting burned. This is a tale, a cautionary tale of a CEO, who grew a big company had a set of rules in place to set him up for success. But you need to read the book to learn what comes out of that. So here's the problem, why do you set rules to keep you out of trouble, but what happens if you break your own rules? The problem is, and most people don't know how to handle failure, they think they do, until it happens. And then their confidence crumbles. And they feel like a complete failure themselves. But what's cool is this books helps you learn from your mistakes, and that you're not defined by your failures, you're refined by these failures. And so Lloyd, tell us a little bit about your professional journey. And then what in the world caused you to write a book outlining all your failures,
Lloyd Brown 1:40
or it's a lot of their, their stage. So you know, I grew up with a dad that was a serial entrepreneur and owns his own company, and at an early age started teaching me about business. Starting with running vending machines, that his business and being responsible fill them up, and both a coke machine and a candy machine and then getting into lawn mowing business, you know, and, and then, you know, going, going through that part of life and getting that preparation, and unfortunately, my dad died when I was 20 years old. And so then I'm kickstarted into life at at hyperspeed, while I'm in college, and I get out and I work for a company that he founded for a number of years, and then went to run a large family operated construction business, and was a miserable failure at that business. And I learned a lot of things about not what I didn't want to do, if I ever had the opportunity to lead my own company. And lo and behold, I ended up starting and found co founding a company with two other partners that really took off and did something very special. And an 11 year timeframe.
Steve Brown 3:01
Yeah, so this company you built, I got to witness it. And as you know, you're my client during this time, and we became friends, but I got to witness you excel in a rough and tumble industry, the oil and gas services industry. And that's, you did a big, I mean, you, you fought a good fight for a long time and experienced a lot of success.
Lloyd Brown 3:31
Absolutely in and near death experiences and all the things that you you do when you're an entrepreneur, and when you when you're leading a business, and you go through dynamic growth cycles, and then you're in an industry that, in and of itself is very volatile, you know, there's peaks and valleys and, and they, they the peaks happen fast, and the valleys seem to happen even faster. And so there's a lot to be learned in that in that process. And the reason there's a lot to be learned is you end up failing a lot you make you make a lot of decisions that don't work out and and most of the time you're able to recover from those. But this last major event and 2020 was one of those that I personally as a leader couldn't recover from.
Steve Brown 4:25
Yeah, you know, I, one of the things I admired, I recognize when I met you and started seeing you and your company, you had a small company, I think about 25 employees or something, and you grew it to over 200 but, but I always felt that you had identified these 10 rules. And I thought I really recognize how it was smart and how it actually led your culture. And it helped you achieve a certain amount of success by building a team by sitting down and coming up with these rules. Where did that come from?
Lloyd Brown 5:04
You know, I was a member of a Vistage group in Fort Worth, and we had a speaker and I really wish I could remember his name, I need to go back and research that. But he was talking about how do you how to help people in your organization, make decisions, as if you were there, but you're not. And he, he said, You know, one of the really important things is to create a culture, that everybody understands the boundaries, everybody understands the guidelines for them to go make decisions. And he really talked about how that establishes trust within the organization. And to me, it resonated, that it's like building a superhighway, right, you have boundaries on each side. But when you're within those boundaries, you can go really fast. And that was the intention behind it. And really identify what the expectations are for how you treat each other as well. So that that's what we did. The management team, which most of us were shareholders in the company, we came together. And we agreed on the 10 rules over a few months, and then implemented them and they really, they really ended up defining my life and so much so that, you know, those roles are really the foundation of writing this book.
Steve Brown 6:33
Yeah. So then, you know, I'm, when I think about those rules, most businesses don't get around, maybe doing that, you know, imagine most small businesses, they just get an idea and they kind of try to figure out if it's gonna stick or not. And then they wake up maybe a couple of to three years later, and and then they start to investigate. How do I impact my culture? How do I set up? How do I solve this problem of my employees, they seem to be kind of out of control, or not understanding what I'm wanting to achieve? And I think it's a real key to success that if you can do this in the beginning, it's a big lever.
Lloyd Brown 7:17
No, I agree with you. Absolutely. It really goes back to how do you establish a relationship that you trust each other. And those those rules or guidelines, whatever you want to call them within the individual organization, they're meant to just give clarity, right? They're meant. So when somebody goes, Hey, I've got a choice A, I got a choice B, you can weigh those against, really those scales within your organization, for your culture, and make a really good decision. And, you know, we only had one rule that if you intentionally broke it, you were terminated. And that was our psyche roll. With everything else. We wanted to give grace, because from failing, you learn, and I'm finding out that I'm gonna have a PhD by the end of my life on learning from my failures.
Steve Brown 8:17
So, so let's establish when you sit down and you start to go, so not everybody's going to want to do the same 10 rules that you do, but those rules that you do decide they're coming from a place of your why.
Lloyd Brown 8:33
Absolutely.
Steve Brown 8:34
So tell us about your why and why these 10 specific rules and we'll we'll quickly let you list those out. But let's start with your why why Where did these come from? And they impacted your 10 rules, or the Why did
Lloyd Brown 8:55
the the why really came down stave two I wanted to have a business to where we treated our customers and our employees with mutual respect and trust. And in the oil and gas industry. And my business was in the chemical side, historically has been known as a lot of snake oil salesmen. And employees also had been treated somewhat as a commodity and where they could come and go, everybody's replaceable. And the companies that think like that, that just didn't, never resonated with me, and it's the reason why I started the business was to be able to make those decisions to help shape it. And really, you know, treat people with trust number one, and respect number two, and in that way, assuming that our products and services were the same people choose to do business and to work in our organization because Have those values.
Steve Brown 10:02
So when we first started working together, you know, the default expectation of an internet marketing company is that I need more business, I need more leads. But that wasn't what you needed. You had plenty of business, you didn't have enough employees to take care of your business. And you can scale because of that. And yet, you're having to compete for these employees with big companies that had more of a weaponized way of recruiting.
Lloyd Brown 10:30
Yeah, I've never thought of it, you know, as a weaponized way, but yeah, they, they really knew how to go find talent, retain talent, and then they reject everybody else. And, and if you had somebody really talented Boy, you know that we're going to come after him. So you had to give people a reason to work for you, I think, you know, there's a lot to the statement, you know, treat people and train them. So they can leave, but treat them so well, but they don't. And you know, Sir Richard Branson, he's the one. I've misquoted him a little bit there. But, you know, he really impressed me when he said that, because you're trusting people that they're going to stay when you treat them well. And if you train them, they're going to be able to grow in your organization that continued to propel that organization forward. You got to have on both. And you just have to trust that doing the right thing is going to provide the right results.
Steve Brown 11:34
Yeah, so I think your rules were your competitive advantage when the employees, the employees were evaluating whether they wanted to work for Company A or your company. And I think you were pinging something that was really important to where my valued, where's my life going to fit and be congruent with my family life?
Lloyd Brown 11:56
Absolutely. And the funny thing is, a lot of folks talked about it being a family atmosphere. And in reflection, I don't know that that's I know what they mean by it. My experience, and my family and other families, most of us are pretty dysfunctional. And you don't want to have a organization that that's why but it's when you have the best of a fingering of a family. That's a high compliment, and, and we had that compliment a lot with an organization.
Steve Brown 12:32
So tell us, tell us about your 10 rules.
Lloyd Brown 12:35
So the 10 rules are rule number one. I'm going to go back to the old 10 rules. Rule number one was a safety role. Because if you don't go home at night, nothing else matters. Rule number two is the golden rule. Treat others as you want to be treated. Rule number three is the gift trust or trust rule. Rule number four, is the half fun rule. You spend more time at work than you shouldn't, anywhere else. You might as well have fun. Rule number five was a vigorous debate, roll. vigorous debate is encouraged, while not violating Rule number two, rule number six, the best rule we expect while you're at your at work, that's going to give me your best every day. Rule number seven, the zig roll named after Zig Ziglar. Help others get what they want, eventually, you'll get what you want. Rule number eight is the commitment roll. Try is not a commitment, say yes or no. So we can know which way we need to go forward. Roll number nine is the celebrate roll, celebrate business and personal victories. And roll number 10 is the learning roll. which happens to be chapter number one of my book.
Steve Brown 13:50
So here we are. Let's let's kind of set the stage on why you wrote this book. Right. So one, one of your stories that really impacted me was here you were you were had had fought this long fight you had made a successful sale and had kind of settled in and was going you were going to version two of the company you're getting ready to scale even bigger. And you had a reason to celebrate. And you were at a car dealership and you were picking up this, this dream car and you get a phone call. Tell us about that story.
Lloyd Brown 14:34
So we had we had sold the business in December of 2018. And the original founding partners and investors were bought out and a new group of investors private equity investors were brought in. And the management team including myself, we all reinvested and so after that 2019 was somewhat of a turbulent year. For the company, and then going into 2020, it was March 27, of 2020. And I got a phone call from the chairman of the board of the company. And he asked me if I had a minute. And it's funny, I was sitting in a car dealership, waiting in the finance to sign the cheque and, and leave for a new 2020 Corvette. So it was a it was really a time I was internally struggling, so struggling, that the business was crashing around us, oil and gas, were on our way to a negative, you know, $40 a barrel for all, it was just a catastrophic time. And I'm everybody's remembering I'm sure how that felt in 2020. And, and he he called, and he said, Hey, you know, we're looking at how we can help the business survive. And we think that we need to lighten the company, and we're heavy in leadership. And we'd like for you to step down.
Steve Brown 16:03
Like, wow, this was a company you started?
Unknown Speaker 16:07
Yes.
Steve Brown 16:09
How did you feel in that moment?
Lloyd Brown 16:14
While in that exact moment, I was panicked. I'm mind racing a million miles an hour, you know, I have an employment agreement, as part of the purchase and, and choosing to stay to lead the company on so I'm thinking about, you know, I've got this agreement I've got all of these things running through my mind, and most prevalent is is, how am I going to have a conversation with my wife? Wow. You know, it's just a wave of emotions. And then you go into the faking it mode, as the guy comes in, says, Hey, we're ready to close the deal. While
Steve Brown 17:01
you think about what that drive home was supposed to feel like in your new car, and I can just imagine was that was the farthest thing from your mind as you were driving?
Lloyd Brown 17:13
Oh, yeah, I get it. I remember, the whole drive every aspect of the drive, and none of it was on how cool or awesome that car was, it was just is completely irrelevant. At that time.
Steve Brown 17:34
So fast forward, you, you decide I'm going to write a book. And most people go and here's, here's the road to success. And this is how you get there. And I can teach you. But what is Lloyd Brown? Do? He writes a book and outlines all his rules? And then shows you where he broke them? What am I supposed to get out of this book?
Lloyd Brown 18:03
I think the number one thing that if I could have an impact is that there's no shame and failure. That that failure does not define you unless you let it and, you know, our society is really good about piling on. And you know, even your worst enemies, your own mind. And when you would have had encouraged me so many times to write a book about the 10 roles in the culture, as I started to write that it really became, you know, evident to me that I needed to write not about our success. But the failure because we learned so much more from that. And it really became a personal journey. That man, it was it was the most awesome, blessed, hard journey I've ever taken.
Steve Brown 19:07
Yeah, when I encourage you to write this book, I was, you know, I was thinking of all the things that you could help someone that was being acquired or someone that was bringing in a investment team or whatever could all the traps that they were about to encounter, and how you can help them navigate it. But which came out with was totally different.
Lloyd Brown 19:30
You know what's funny? I think I did outline the traps.
Unknown Speaker 19:37
As I stepped in all of them.
Lloyd Brown 19:41
I don't know if I stepped on all of them, but I step in a lot of traps. Most of them were set by me and I forgot they were there and stepped right in. But yeah, maybe. Maybe we accomplish that. Anyway.
Steve Brown 19:57
So we're listening to Lloyd brown or why You're watching Layne brown on the ROI online podcast, we're talking about his book that just released yesterday. And three categories. Number one best seller, refined by failure, breaking rules and getting burned. So, Lloyd I always, I hear these questions, often people come to us and they're, they're, you know, they're wanting to this investment to help them grow the value of their business, but oftentimes work on our messaging, and an impacts or leadership. So I wanted to ask you several questions here and just get your, your off the cuff answer.
Unknown Speaker 20:37
Okay, Dan, so
Steve Brown 20:38
why is leadership important in life?
Lloyd Brown 20:48
Well, you're either leading or you're following. I mean, it's just, it's, uh, I've never really thought of it this way. But you're, you're following somebody, you're following a path? And a lot of people say, Hey, no, you're forging your own way. And I, I don't know that that's always correct. I think those paths have been taken. Sometimes they're harder than what others have gone through. And, and but leadership's important for a follower, to be able to trust that later. And to be able to have clarity of where they're leading you to, are they leading you to a path of abundance and, and success and growth? Or are they leading you into a path that is stagnant and detrimental to your your physical and mental health? I mean, leadership's extraordinarily important.
Steve Brown 21:50
I think the intent of your 10 rules will impact the answer and this question here, but why is integrity important in leadership?
Lloyd Brown 22:04
I think it all be integrity is the foundation of trust. You know, ask everybody what their definition of integrity is. And it goes all over the place, but really comes down to do you trust that person? To do what they say and say what they do. I mean, that's really what it boils down to. So if you can't trust where you're going, there's no integrity in the organization. There's really there gets to be these little I don't know if you want to call them fiefdoms are little pods and, and are cliques. And it's just it's just unhealthy. When there's not clarity, and boundaries on how you treat each other and and how you do business.
Steve Brown 22:58
So causes of leadership failure. Were the top three,
Lloyd Brown 23:08
who great question stay on want to grab a drink of water while I'm contemplating that one, top three. arrogance, number one, and arrogance for me, I'm going to speak for me was being a know it all and thinking I knew it all, and that I didn't need others advice. And they became my way or the highway in many instances. So I'd be I'd be right up there. Not applying your roles equally. And for me, that meant when I had people that have been in my relationships for a really long time, I would give them a pass on some of the ways that we treated people for example, and that really created doubt, looking back at created doubt and in my leadership and doubting the trust, because, again, they want they didn't have integrity. So one of the greatest things you can do that I would not be sitting here without my friends that came in, and it moments in time within the business sacrifice themselves in an amazing way. But at another point, not having those boundaries or that accountability and filling since they had done so much sacrificing that I gave them grace and gave them opportunities to treat others the way they didn't need to be treated in it. Like, they're really, it was tough. So hiring friends and family if you can avoid it, avoid it. That's That's it. Number three, golly, Steve,
I would probably say, not focusing on your profit. I mean it, you got to be profitable. And so when you read the book, you'll find out that my 10 roles are not the same 10 roles that we just talked about.
Steve Brown 25:46
Excellent. So that's what leads me on. So this last one, leadership failure examples, you have 10 of them in your book. And you've rearranged them. So what are the what are the, what's the order now?
Lloyd Brown 26:06
Well, rule number one is today is give trust or trust. It's because it's the beginning of any foundation of a relationship. And before you can have any other boundaries or roles, you've got to step into a relationship by either giving trust, while really always giving trust and then earning that trust. Rule number two, is the safety role. Again, because if you don't go home at night, nothing else matters. Rule number three is the golden rule, treat others as you want to be treated. Rule number four is profit first means you can have fun. And really, if you think about profit, first is putting people first. Rule number five is still the vigorous debate roll. And six is the best roll 708 is the commitment roll nine is the celebrate roll and 10 is learning roll.
Steve Brown 27:04
So now that your your books written, folks are going to read it. And they're going to look to you for some sort of input. What's the proper expectation of how you could help them think through their rules?
Lloyd Brown 27:29
While it goes back to the first question you asked me, which was why? And words, main things, big time. And it's funny how as I've been blessed with the opportunity to mentor some folks right now, really helping them understand the clarity behind what they say and why they say it. Because many times will say something that is really tied to a feeling without really diving into the real meaning and purpose behind that. And if we can't be completely clear about it, right? Yep, it creates an opportunity within the organization and even the leadership, to not have clarity, because it we each defined something differently. So give us an example.
Steve Brown 28:17
Maybe someone that obviously, you didn't just come up with this. You've been working with folks for a while, give us an example of success.
Lloyd Brown 28:36
And what context
Steve Brown 28:37
wells when you sat down and you've helped someone clarify their why and begin and what's been the outcome of that.
Lloyd Brown 28:49
So I think, one fruit, cause success is something that you you work at every day, it's it's a, it's kind of like perfection. You have moments that you get really, really good at something, but you're never going to be perfect. It's impossible to be perfect. Success is very much it's you can have success for a moment. But a life of success is moments of having wins. And so where I really see companies becoming and transitioning and really that owner, entrepreneur, is when they have clarity, the speed that their organization starts moving. The alignment that comes in, I've got I've got a pair of clients right now they both are leading the organization. And in about four months, five months, they've gotten their y down and they've really gotten clarity in the organization. And everything just starts clicking. It's It's crazy how fast they're moving. And propelling their business forward. And then it's, for me, it's satisfying to scope while you guys are just growing in a way, and they're having fun. It's I mean, and that's what I business is hard. But you ought to have more time of the day that you're enjoying it, then you're not. If it's drudgery, you might need to think about doing something else.
Steve Brown 30:28
I think that this, let's assume your organization has people that are committed, they have the best intent and interest in success. And imagine they're all heading to some point on a horizon somewhere. And the biggest challenge for any leader is to take this this direction, and out of their head and clearly make it where everyone can see it. So all of a sudden, the energy start to align and go to the same point. And I, when I was reading your book, I was seeing that this could be very impactful for a lot of people. But the other thing I took away was, most of us define ourselves by our failures, and we beat ourselves up for so long. And here you are going, No, you don't. You can take this and flip that. And I think it's something that most leaders need a little help to talk it through with someone. It's it's hard to let yourself off the hook sometimes. And I think absolutely, I think this is a very empowering aspect of your book. Thank you. So we're listening. Or you're watching Lloyd, our conversation with Lloyd Brown, and he's an author. Now, his book is refined by failure, breaking rules and getting burned. It's a Amazon bestseller in three categories right out of the gate on the first day. sirloin, I always ask this questions like, what's one question that I didn't ask that you wish that would have?
Lloyd Brown 32:15
I would say,
what has been the impact on your family of breaking rules?
Steve Brown 32:28
So yeah, let's talk about that, that can that's a little sensitive.
Lloyd Brown 32:33
Well, it is. And when you don't have personal boundaries, as a leader, and you break your own rules, that doesn't just impact the business. It impacts everybody that's involved in your life. And that, to me, probably, you know, has the greatest impact. Because if you can lead well at work, it really makes you a better leader at home. And if you can set those boundaries at work and have clarity there, and you do that at home, and it just helps on both sides. And I can say since the day that I was called and actually really, the end of June, June 29 was really a turning point for me, because my wife looked at me and she told me I'm done. I'm not doing this craziness anymore. And which led me to hire a coach for my mind. guy named Dave Hollis or read his book, and he talked about, you know, we'll do a lot of things for our physical health, but we don't focus on our most the strongest part of our body, which is our mind. And that that's really those two things are the ones that I had pushed you to ask me. So you did now
Steve Brown 34:03
Yeah, the your book starts off with a big gut punch on that topic. And it's like I think a lot of us all struggle with with that same experience in some way where we've neglected in this fight to be successful in this justification of all this is worth it or I gotta go focus on this and and yet we neglect the people we love the most.
Unknown Speaker 34:30
Absolutely.
Steve Brown 34:33
So Lloyd, where's How can people reach out to you connect with you learn more about you get your book tell us all of that.
Lloyd Brown 34:41
Well, books available on my website. And that's also how you can reach out to me which is refined by failure, calm. It's available on Amazon and all in iBooks. And I think they'll be some other outlets. That'll be picking it up here pretty quick. So, but we have the link on my website. And that's really one of the easiest ways to go. It'll take you right to the page on Amazon to be able to buy either the Kindle version, or the printed copy of the book.
Steve Brown 35:17
most business owners write books on how to do it, right. Here's what you do. Lloyd brown know, he's going to do it differently. But he's going to touch in deep, refined by failure, breaking rules and getting burned. Stephen, Mr. Covey, he's even endorsed you. So congratulations, Lloyd.
Lloyd Brown 35:39
Thank you, Steve. Thank you. Thank you. And again, thank you for being one of my coaches and encouragers and the book wouldn't happen without that.
Steve Brown 35:52
Yeah. Well, you're welcome mine. I'm proud. This is good stuff. Boy, you've been a great guest on ROI online podcast.
Lloyd Brown 36:01
Thank you for having me, Steve. I really appreciate it. And that's a
Steve Brown 36:05
wrap
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
