Pat Mancuso - Leading, Motivating, and Inspiring Others As A CEO

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Pat Mancuso is a highly recognized thought leader, entrepreneur, coach and consultant. He's launched multiple businesses that have achieved high levels of success, including launching Keller Williams in Minnesota, which grew to over 800 agents and nearly $1 billion in sales volume in less than 4 years. He has facilitated over 30,000 1-on-1 coaching & consulting conversations to impact business and life transformation. As the CEO of Mancuso Consulting Group, Pat utilizes a proprietary system called Recruit, Select, Train, Manage, Motivate, which helps organizations grow their leadership capabilities and performance through selecting the right people for the right seats, and leading them to their highest potential.

In this episode, hosted by Mike Swenson, we discussed:

• The value of leadership, building and growing businesses, CEO burnout, & mistakes in hiring.
• In Real Estate, it really matters who you get into business with and who's going to stand behind you
• Find people that you can trust and rely on to help you to leverage to the next level
• There's always a place to find money with a good concept of a good business proposal
• As a CEO and a business owner, you need to first have self awareness. Understand yourself first
• Focus on how to teach organizations, entrepreneurs, leaders and CEOs to make the right hires
• Understanding people is important and you're not going to succeed without those people
• As a leader you have a responsibility, if you're going to bring people in your organization, you have to impact their lives
• The first thing you do is to make a decision to make a change. Second thing is you need to make a 100% all-in commitment to that change. Third is to get clarity.

Timestamps

0:00 - Intro and overview on Pat‘s career
1:40 - How Pat got to his high level of success
7:37 - How Pat continue grew and scaled his business
10:24 - How Pat took risks in his business
14:16 - Importance of systems and database in real estate
16:32 - Importance of roadmap in real estate
17:37 - Importance of proprietary system in hiring and building a team in real estate
23:03 - Pat's behavior, performance, and burnout as a CEO
27:13 - Steps to put the right people in their right positions
37:19 - Learn more about Pat

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Full transcript here:

Mike Swenson 

Welcome to The REL freedom podcast where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together

Mike Swenson 

Hello, everybody, welcome to another episode of REL freedom stories. And today we're gonna be talking about leadership, building and growing businesses, CEOs, burnout mistakes that people make along the way hiring, you name it. We have a leadership operational expert here Pat Mancuso. And we're so excited to have Pat be a part of the show. Just a quick bio about Pat's highly recognized thought leader, entrepreneur, Coach consultant, launched multiple businesses, including a real estate brokerage that had 800 agents and nearly a billion dollars in sales volume in less than four years, facilitated 30,000 coaching calls, you've worked events with 12,000 students in live classroom settings and 41,000 people in digital events, CEO of Mancuso Consulting Group, you utilize your proprietary system, RSTMM, which is recruit, select, train, manage and motivate. And so just a wealth of wisdom. So, Pat, we're so excited to have you on the show and excited to talk about leadership.

Pat Mancuso 

Well, Mike, thank you. And I saw, I feel exhausted after you've gone through that, that whole deal there. I've been very fortunate that a lot of opportunities and a lot of learning opportunities. So I'm excited to be here today and share.

Mike Swenson 

Let's just talk a little bit about the background stuff, kind of how you got to where you're at how you got to those bots and leadership where you could make those large impacts with people.

Pat Mancuso 

Yeah. So you know, I've been very blessed in my journey, if you may, I started, I went to college, I thought I wanted to be in accounting. And I quickly realized that I probably didn't have the right behavioral graph if you made for an accountant. And so so that that led me to real estate. Interestingly enough, I did my first internship. And as I was doing that internship for an accountant, one of the parts of the internship was for real estate broker for an entrepreneur who managed multifamily units. And that experience, I started out as a credit manager, so to speak, which is basically approving leases for renters. And that led me to becoming certified as a certified property manager, and ultimately managing about 1600 units of residential real estate in six states very young in my early 20s, after college. And what happened interesting enough was, that led me to really getting excited about real estate.

Pat Mancuso 

And the second kind of defining moment there was I was kind of burned out. And that business did that for five years. And the gentleman who sold me my first house, back in 1987, came to me and said, Hey, have you ever thought about selling real estate? And my response to him was no benefits, no guaranteed pay? And no, I've never thought about selling real estate. And so he worked on me for about six months. And the thing that I'll never forget, Mike about that is that when I came into real estate, one of the things I did understand from college and the entrepreneurs and the mentors that had been around was I was starting a business, I wasn't just getting a real estate license, I literally was starting a business. And so as a business owner, usually you have to have capital, and you either have it or you borrow it. And in my case, I've out it about $18,000 Back in 1991 from a family member so that I could come into real estate full time, all in run it as a business. And you know, really, I haven't looked back, I've had amazing opportunities along the way, which we'll probably talk about, but that's kind of where it started.

Mike Swenson 

Yeah, it's interesting that, that you took the money and went all in on real estate. You know, because in my background building and growing teams over the last six or seven years, I've learned more and more It's like the farther I get into real estate, the more I realize, part time is so hard, you know, and unless you have a specific plan to get into it full time. You just don't get the momentum you know and so that's why I feel like for those people it's like wait, wait until the time is right in your life to make a full run at it because if you know they say you know if you try to chase two rabbits you end up catching none right?

Mike Swenson 

And so I think yeah, for the people that I've seen that have been successful, it's the ones that are willing to jump in and then also burn the lifeboat too. Because otherwise if you if you're trying to make a little bit of money here and a little bit of money over here, you're just not going to gain that momentum because for you know, there's a lot of success stories in real estate where you you hit it right out of the gate 20 3040 closings are free Hear, and there's a lot of people that, you know, 456 closings, and you just do that and until you can get over that hump, it's just tough to get that momentum to where you you can go in full time.

Pat Mancuso 

Well, you know, it's interesting, I was fortunate I had a rental that I brought from the property management side into real estate I sold that, basically my first day in real estate, so to speak. But But the real issue is, Mike is that it's like, you know, people, it's not a job, right? People come in to real estate, because they don't want a job. But it really is a job. You know, if you think about you will you go to work, and today, your employer is going to pay you something, and then when they pay you, they're gonna expect that you do certain things to earn that pay. Well, real estate, the only differences is the employer is you, the boss is you. And you still have to do certain things to earn that pay.

Pat Mancuso 

And unfortunately, or fortunately, whichever way you look at it, real estate is not like a Best Buy, like I go into Best Buy this afternoon, I give them money for a TV, they get the money, I get the TV, I do something in real estate, you know, today to create a transaction, you know, the real estate agent doesn't get paid 4560 90 days from now. And so and that's one of the things that I don't think the industry does a good enough job of, it certainly certainly didn't teach me that in the beginning, but I knew it inherently. And that's why I borrowed the money. So I didn't have to worry about, you know, what if I don't have a closing for the 30, you know, 3060 90 days, I was fortunate that I did. I was fortunate to be Rookie of the Year and one of the largest independent contract companies in the United States at the time. And, you know, so I just, it really was that foundation that needs to be built. And frankly, in the work that we do today, with small to medium sized businesses, CEOs, entrepreneurs, it's really the mistake that many of them make is not thinking like, what does it look like to own a business? What do I need to run a business successfully? And how do I build it?

Mike Swenson 

And frankly, my background, I was an entrepreneurship major in college. And it took me 15 years to start my own business because I was scared. Right? Like, you know, I grew up with parents, you know, we had the W two job, we had the benefits, we had the safe, stable income. And so for me, it was the mindset around, you know, betting on myself and taking a risk. And it took me 15 years out of college to do that. I took a class in real estate in college, basically covered two thirds of the licensure, you know, piece that you needed, and I just decided, no, I don't want to do that. I want the safe stable thing. And you know, I was in finance and operations but yeah, it's it's taking that risk. But yeah, you're, you're the boss, and you're also the janitor, and everything in between your everything. Absolutely. So talk about that. Okay, see you had your start, and how did things continue to kind of grow and continue to scale from there.

Pat Mancuso 

So, you know, my first basically 10 years in real estate were with one of the largest independents in the country was Burnett Realty, formerly known as Burnett and it was bought out by NRT senden at the time, it was one of the first major acquisitions for them. The founders of that company sold it for 80 million, which was amazing at the time. My journey in that company for 10 years was a high profile leader, a young leader in the company. I went into leadership, which was awesome was a great experience and helped me in building brokerages after that, however, I stepped out of that once the company was sold, and because I kind of saw what was going to happen, you know, locally on company, local owners to national company, not national or local owners anymore. So then went back to building a real estate team.

Pat Mancuso 

And in the last year that I sold full real estate with the business partner that I had, we did 180 units with two buyer's agents and one admin and at that time, building a real estate team was not what it is today. In fact, the you know, the book to build the team, The Millionaire Real Estate Agent was not written yet. We were hanging around a lot of the right people, the right mentors, and so we built that business and then I got introduced to Keller Williams concept very early on in the Keller Williams growth. When I joined Keller Williams, when we launched our first brokerage, there were 11,000 agents. In fact, in Minnesota, and you've got, you know, obviously history here, Mike, you know, we were referred to when we first launched as Sherwin Williams, like, Oh, you're the paint company, because you know, Keller Williams at the time was just a small company in Austin. And that was probably one of the best business decisions I've made in my journey.

Pat Mancuso 

From the standpoint of, you know, we got to launch brokerages, we started our first broker with 11 agents, and within four years, we went to 800 agents. We really put Keller Williams on the map in the Midwest, and that opportunity afforded me other opportunities within the Keller Williams University at being a regional director, and then being a bulk coach for 11 years and having the opportunity to go on the road and impact agents of all walks of life, if you may, from the brand new agent coming in to the top producing agent who wanted to build a team. And, you know, those experiences have really provided did a lot of opportunities for us and where we are today?

Mike Swenson 

You know, there's lots of business opportunities out there. And you know, you're fortunate to be in a position where you aligned with the right people, your business exploded, and the brokerage exploded. And there's a lot of great things that come from that. There's lots of other stories to have people who take risks and, and partner with people, and it doesn't work out that well. So. So if you wouldn't mind sharing a little bit like kind of that that decision when you decided, yes, this is a risk I'm worth taking people are, you know, people don't even know what it is, soda. But yet, I feel strongly enough that this is going to be the thing that's going to help launch my career to the next level. Talk about that a little bit and kind of how you helped make that decision?

Pat Mancuso 

Well, you know, it's interesting, because that decision actually crossed both sides of the spectrum you just referred to. So it was a great business decision at the time. And then the end result was is we had some things that didn't quite work out the way that we had planned them to work out. So what I would say to you first is that one of the things I learned in that journey was it really matters who you get into business with. And it doesn't matter when things are going well, what it what matters is when there's bumps in the road, it matters when you know, when push comes to shove, it matters as to who's going to stand behind you, when maybe people are attacking you. And that was the biggest thing that I learned is that we really didn't do a lot of that due diligence in the beginning the group that came together, we came together because we had a common goal. And that was we didn't like our current broker just that was really the common goal. And the common place to solve that goal was Keller Williams, we did a lot of due diligence.

Pat Mancuso 

And at the time, Keller Williams was the place that would allow us to do that. But as we grew those businesses and I, you know, I was the was the point person I was the creator, I was the leader I was the face. What, what I realized was is that although the people that were in business with were nice people, there was nothing wrong with them. They just didn't have the same thinking as I did in the same mindset around businesses I did and that showed up down the road, and cost me personally and others a lot of money. And so one of the things I've learned in my journey at KW, and I'm fortunate enough now to have the opportunity to do this on a daily basis is there's a model that we brought into Keller Williams called recruit, select, train, manage, motivate, and this is a proprietary system, that kW had moved us that Gary had used early in the mid 80s, to really get his company on track.

Pat Mancuso 

And Moe Anderson was the CEO that was brought in to do that. And I just had the opportunity yesterday to interview Moe for a book that we're doing. And without that system, Keller Williams might not have survived. And that system, you know, is really about, first of all, who are you you got to know who you are as a leader, you can't lead others until you know who you are. And what I mean by that is, who are you behaviorally? Who are you from an attitude perspective? Who are you from successes and failures and all those opportunities, and then understanding human behavior understanding putting the right people in the right positions, for the right reasons is what allows companies to excel, many companies don't have the the process to actually do that. So you know, that that that process after the fact, would have probably allowed us to succeed at a higher level. And for me personally, that one door closing opened up other doors. So it's, you know, it's one of those things, that's usually what happens.

Pat Mancuso 

But I wouldn't be where I am today without that experience. And I wouldn't be where I am today without the experiences that followed that the opportunities that followed that. So I think it's just really important, you know, to understand, you know, who you're getting into business with. And, you know, a lot of people get into business with others, because it's a convenience. And what I would tell you is don't do that, you might not think you can do it on your own, you might not think you don't have the money on your own, but there's always a place to find money. That's another thing that I learned, there's always a place to find money with a good concept with a good business proposal. And, you know, in so that's, that's some of the things that I've learned along the way, many, many others and yet, those are just the ones that come up from that journey.

Mike Swenson 

And what I love about Keller Williams in is the systems, right? They've got a system, it's a proven thing. Instead of you know, as entrepreneurs, you often like to chase the shiny objects and wing it and go with your gut, and that sort of thing. It's like, look, we we have time tested principles that we can lean on that will help us make better decisions and lower the risk and increase the opportunity for success. And you know, so many of us are guilty throughout times where you just try to make these quick decisions, right? Because we like to move fast. And, and we think like oh, if I'm making quick decisions, we're good. We're plowing new ground, but it's also good to be reminded stop. Think about this for a minute and I think too, with real estate teams, so many times people hire you if you have a license and a pulse, because now my team is growing. And what you realize is they're representing your business. They're working with your clients in your database. And am I going to let this person essentially be in kind of a marriage type relationship with me? After I just talked to them for 15? Realize, license, check, pulse check. Okay, now you're on our team. And so what I love about the systems is it forces us to pause, slow down, make smart decisions, calculated decisions, not just gut instinct.

Pat Mancuso 

Well in like, you're right, and you know, I can just go to some examples where it certainly is about the systems. And I would, I would even take this to a higher level, it's really about the thinking, because you can have systems and yet if the thinking doesn't align with the systems, so what I feel like Callaway has taught me over the years is how to think differently as a business owner, not just a real estate, somebody's real estate, it really has taught me to think differently. As a business owner, it's taught me to think differently as a parent, to think differently as a husband. And so because everything starts with thinking, right, and then the next thing when you talk about real estate teams is you know, I just did an Oregon's we call it an organizational assessment, we just went and spent a day with a team on down in Florida about six months ago. And this is a million dollar GCI team, there's somebody that we coach, however, they needed some additional help, there was some there was some things within the team that needed to be addressed.

Pat Mancuso 

And the leader was smart enough to invest the money for us to come down and spend the day with their team. And that process created a model a path forward to two things allow the team to get more in alignment, because there was issues within the team that although they had success, they weren't all on alignment, and then the strategy moving forward for the business owner to really go to that level where in three to five years, they can exit the business and be more of an investor versus just a doer, and then actually have a passive, you know, income cash flow, if you may. So one of the things that's hard for team owners, particularly in real estate, is their entrepreneurs. There's no roadmap, and we do it if as an entrepreneur, we do it with the way that we think we should do it, which will give us success. But it's not going to get us to where we need to get to, we're going to hit a ceiling at some point that we're going to need a system a model or tool to get through, as Gary talks about in the Millionaire Real Estate Agent break, you have to break through ceilings, and there's not just one ceiling, it's multiple ceilings, you know, we launched our first business, we had to launch a second one different dynamics.

Pat Mancuso 

Third one. And, you know, you step along the way when you're hiring and building a team if you don't, and this is probably the most important thing I think people should take away. If you don't have a proprietary system that you can replicate duplicate that you understand yourself to hire, you're not going to be as successful as you could be otherwise, you know, we're working with a SaaS company right now in Florida, they service real estate, the real estate industry, and they've made some significant mistakes along the way, both and investors, they brought in partners, so to speak, that they brought into the business, and then hires that they made, and they brought us in a year and a half ago to help them. And, you know, just the process of helping them make the right hires, has allowed them to take their business from where it was to a higher level to where, you know, two years from now, there'll be a $10 million company. And right now they're about a $2 million company. So it's just real important. That's a big piece. Yeah.

Mike Swenson 

And I think for you know, talking about the purposes of the podcast, your real freedom, building wealth, and kind of gaining time and financial freedom through real estate. A big part of that is recognizing I can't do it all by myself. And you know, and I think that's, that's an initial, purposeful point to think about is because, you know, it's, I've been burned in the past, I've had these bad relationships, these things, but I'm just gonna do it all myself, and I'm gonna be successful and do it all on my own. Well, you realize that, you know, when you're, when you're doing all that you can do and you can't do anymore, you're missing the person, right? And so that's where you have to find other people.

Mike Swenson 

And it doesn't have to be you know, there's a lot of very successful people in real estate that don't have these huge organizations, you might have a few great leverage pieces and some virtual assistants and admin help, right have to have a 25 piece orchestra here to make your your life successful and hit your goals. But at the same time, you do have to recognize I need other people to get to the for sure the next ceiling of achievement, right, you're going to need to from doing it all yourself to doing it with others. You've got to find some people that you can trust rely on and that can help leverage you to that next.

Pat Mancuso 

And I think Mike, you're right. I do think you know, again, I've been in real estate since you know 1987 On time, is I do think you're seeing a separation right now in the businesses, if you may have real estate agents, you're seeing the, you know, large expansion teams, the Ben Kenny, in Chris Suarez type of model with place and the Adam and Adam hurting Rother with living in and, you know, you're seeing mega teams being built, taking additional market share, because they can provide higher level service provide a higher leverage, and it doesn't mean they always do. And yet those organizations I just mentioned do and and yet, an individual agent, even with some support is going to hit a ceiling where they can only do so many transactions, because there just isn't enough time there is for all the things that need to be done. So you know, the struggle entrepreneurs have this, they don't want to let go of it, they don't think somebody else can do it as good as them. And frankly, there's a lot of things people could do better than them.

Pat Mancuso 

And when they come to that realization, that'll allow them to break through that ceiling. And that's just getting to know who you are, it goes back again, to many I know I as an entrepreneur was never taught to set down or explain my behavior. In fact, most of my life, I was told my behavior was negative, like, oh, my gosh, Pat, you're so aggressive, like you're so aggressive. And I took that on as a negative. And until somebody, you know, sat down with me and told me the behavioral assessment, and then explained it to me, I never realized I took on the fact that that was negative and it was actually wasn't negative, nor was it positive. By the way. It's just the behavior that in certain roles is really, really beneficial. And I just needed to understand that. And once entrepreneurs understand who they are, and then how behavior works, they get their lives change if they follow models to do that. And that's what we do with companies and part of what we do today.

Mike Swenson 

Yeah, and one of the things that I understood, you know, going through those behavior profiles is, is I'm such a high sc. And I tell people that it is like the iceberg. I think things through so much. And when I finally do bring it to the surface, it's like, I'm not talking, you know, I had a good friend of mine in my previous job where she talked to process through it. And I'm like, why are you asking me these questions? Why haven't you spent five hours thinking through your, your possible solutions, and now I'm telling you, my my pre crafted solution here for your validation. And so I realized, like, that's one of the things about me that yeah, it can be a positive can be a negative. And what people sometimes see is, when I do come out, and I experienced opposition, it's, it comes out as a high D, because I've thought this through so much. And I'm talking to you for validation. Now you're questioning it, like how dare you do that, when I've spent 80% of my time 90% of my time thinking about the thing below the surface, and now you're just seeing the little iceberg on the top of water

Pat Mancuso 

That's understanding behavior, that's understanding how to communicate with a behavior that is opposite of you, or similar to you or, you know, somewhere in between. And without knowing how to do that, it causes a lot of significant issues in organizations. And it's, it's just, it's really empowering, when you can do that.

Mike Swenson 

We kind of want to touch on a few things, you know, your behavior and your performance and how those can go hand in hand and then talk about CEO burnout, because a lot of the people listening to this are entrepreneurs, they're CEOs of companies of different size, right. And because of your wisdom and your experience in those areas, I'd love to just hear your your impact your thoughts on those things, because you're in it. Yeah.

Pat Mancuso 

So so it's probably not going to be surprising. The reason that many CEOs struggle with being a CEO, and you could say burnout, you could say lack of success and what they're doing whatever they struggle with, if you really break it down, it goes back to people. Because if they're, if they're struggling with burnout, then they don't have the right people around them to be taking things off of their plate, so that they can be in their zone. So we do a process with CEOs before we even take them on as clients and we call it an exploratory interview and explore exploratory day, where we bring into our conference room. And what we do is we actually spend a day with them, just asking them questions. And one of the exercises we go through is we'll say, you know, something like so Hey, Mike, you know, let's talk about all the things you do on a regular basis during the day. And we'll flip chart that out in our office, we'll put it up on the wall, and then I'll say So Mike, circle, the five of all these things that you referenced circle the five that you do most often during the day.

Pat Mancuso 

So those circle the five, that more more often than not, they're doing, then we take a different color pen and we say, okay, let's circle the five that you really enjoy doing the most. Guess what? They're never they're never the same. And the CEO looks at this flip turn up on the wall and they have this aha moment all of a sudden ago. Oh, now I understand why I'm not happy. Now I understand why my business isn't performing. Now. I understand why why relationships are struggling. And they look at because there's always a cause and effect and that's a lot of times what people don't see, you know, it's so interesting, I share this, and I'm not going to name the name of the company. But we're going through, I'm going through an experience as a consumer right now, with a large national company of a product and a service that we bought. And I made a connection on LinkedIn with the CEO of this company. I mean, this is a huge brand, huge brand. And I reached out to the CEO on LinkedIn. And surprisingly, he responded.

Pat Mancuso 

And it was, it was, I think, my message, my line in the message was, it will know if you care after reading this, that was the phrase. And so I got a response back from him. And that was four months ago, but we're dealing with an ongoing issue that hasn't been solved. And I keep attempting to tell the CEO as a consumer, the problem is you, because the people that you're leaving are acting just like you are and not solving the problem. And that's a big blind spot. And until you get a CEO in a room, where they don't have their phone out, they don't have the email on and you basically, I use the word dress them down, you basically get them to uncover everything. And you know, when they do that, it allows them to really have freedom from a time that they probably have never had it before. Because they're so engaged in the business that, frankly, a lot of them never take a step back from the business, they never can see the business from a perspective that I can see it as a third party.

Pat Mancuso 

And some of this stuff is so obvious as a consultant, that when you actually have that opportunity to give them that freedom to step away from their business from for a couple of days. And you ask them questions that no one has ever asked them before. It just totally changes their perspective, as a CEO and a business owner. Now the issue is, it's first you have the awareness. Now the issue is what am I going to do. And this all goes back to people, because the only way that you're going to fix these things is through people. And either through people in the right positions, doing the right things, or coaching people who are in the right positions to do and think differently, to do the right things. It always comes back to people, it starts with people. I know that's surprising, I knew you're probably looking for a different answer. But if you start with the people, everything else will fall into place.

Mike Swenson 

So if you know if you've come to the conclusion, you've you know, let's say you've got a business right now. And you're questioning maybe whether the people are the right people or whether they're in the right seats, what are some steps that they can take to kind of start through that process?

Pat Mancuso 

The first question is, what is my process to determine if they're the right people for the role? Like you have to have a process doesn't have to be our process, but you have to have a process that's consistent. That's based upon some factual evidence that's based upon some foundations, you have to determine if you have the right people. No, by the way, they're all great people. Let's be clear. If you put an individual in a role, and they're not performing, it's your fault as a CEO, but this is what we tell CEOs, right? You put them there, you hired them, you put them there, your organization put them there. So the first thing is to determine what is the process that you have inside your organization that you're utilizing that everybody in the organization falls in line with that everybody understands how it works, that everybody's on the same page. So if you don't have that, then you really have to get to that point first. Because you can't fix anything that long term is going to be a fix.

Pat Mancuso 

So for example, let's say you don't have a proprietary hiring process that you're trained on, that you're versed on, well, now you have to replace somebody. Well, now how do you do that? Well, you do it entrepreneurially? Well, what if that person doesn't work out? Well, then you do it entrepreneurially? Again, and how many times? Do you make this mistake? And what is usually what happens like is the people always point the finger someplace else. They go, Well, I hired Mike, he wasn't that good? Okay, well, you hired him. So before him not being that good, you hired him, so the fingers pointing at you. So the for that's the first step. The second step then is they have to identify how to fix it, which is in you know, our model is the second part. So we first focus on how do we teach organizations and entrepreneurs and leaders and CEOs to make the right hires, what's their process? What's behavioral matching, you know, do the due diligence on hiring somebody, then once you make that right hire, then what is the next step to put them in a position to succeed?

Pat Mancuso 

Real estate agents respectfully, this is where they're incredibly guilty. If they make the first right decision somehow, someway with the system or not, let's say, well, now they bring the person in and they go, Okay, well, here's your phone, here's what you need to do today. You go create all the systems you go create all the models in, I want it now I get to go do what I want to do. And that's not how you train people effectively. One of the things that in the company, one of the companies that we're working with, we've been helping them hire is they've made some hires recently with folks that work for Tesla worked for Microsoft work for XFINITY These are large net Chanel worldwide brands. And one of the things that they said during the process was both in the hiring process. And now subsequently, in the first 90 days of training, we've never, ever had an experience like this with these large companies.

Pat Mancuso 

And so so it's not just enough to hire them, you got to make you got to train them, you got to empower them, you got to put them in a position to succeed in the first 3060 90 days, because you never get that time back. The first day is never a first day again. So what's interesting is is real estate. I say this respectfully, real estate agents historically, don't treat that first day like it's never a first day again. So and then beyond the 90 days is how do you keep people motivated and inspired? How do you help them grow? It's one of the most common things in hiring, you hear from people who are looking for new opportunities, I want to have an opportunity to grow, what's the future path within the organization. But again, if the CEO hasn't created that future path, if they're not out 135 years in their business, you can't share that with with anybody you're trying to attract. And that's why teams see such high struggle, high turnover, because people want to be attracted to a culture, they want to be attracted to a vision moving forward. And they want to know where their opportunities are.

Pat Mancuso 

And this is all fundamentally the things that we work with. When we work with CEOs or we work with the agent teams and mega teams and I've been for I've been fortunate to have coached some of the top top people in the real estate industry over the years, names that are highly recognized that are in multimillion dollar companies have created, you know, just big things. And in so in, what's interesting is I saw the vision of those folks, and we were coaching him, I saw where they wanted to go. So it was real clear that they would get there. You know, it's hard to know how long and when, but you know, there are a few people now, who are, you know, raising public funds for some of the things that they're doing that started off as real estate agents. You know, that's pretty cool.

Mike Swenson 

Yeah, and you can, you can see, you know, that just, as you're talking about those things, I just, in my mind, see, there's, there's so many missed opportunities along the way. And yet at the same time, we always talk about the two times the two best times to plant a tree 20 years ago, and today, right. And so I think to encourage those folks that have looked up and said, Gosh, Pat, Pat's just shining that mirror up right now. And I'm seeing all the things that you know, have gone wrong, things that I want to improve and all that. And now I'm, I'm realizing a I'm a huge cause of this. Yes, I am. Because, yes, and, and I have to set myself up, I've got a lot of homework to do here. But the key, you know, the, the encouragement here is, is you can right, the ship, you can get things fixed. But the same time Yeah, I mean, understanding people are important, and you're not going to succeed without those people.

Pat Mancuso 

Yeah, yeah, it really is. And, you know, one of the other things is, as a leader, you have a responsibility, if you're going to bring people in your organization, you have a responsibility to impact their lives. And if if you're if, as a leader, you're not doing some of the things we're talking about, you're not impacting their lives positively, you're not providing a great experience for them. And, you know, I don't know where you were gonna go. But I'll just kind of jump maybe a little bit and say, you know, when you when you have that moment that you say, Yeah, you know, what, I know that I have more potential, which, of course we all do, the first thing you have to do is you have to make a decision, you don't get into action and change it, I'm just gonna, from a coaching consulting perspective, you don't just go take action, you have to make a decision that you want to do it differently.

Pat Mancuso 

And until you make that decision, and you're 100% committed to that decision, like we've met with CEOs over the years I have in our consulting business, and we'll have them in our conference room, and will, they'll have the aha moment that they need to fix this. And one case, in particular, I had a CEO of a very large local Midwest company, you would probably know the name because you're from the area. And that CEO sat in my conference room in new they had an issue knew that they needed to fix it. But they weren't willing to make the decision to do what was necessary to fix it. And six months later, they were bankrupt. And I'm talking a multi unit organization that, you know, was very visible in the bottom line is the CEO wasn't willing to make the decision that needed to be made to fix it. And so therefore, that led him down a different path. So you got him you got to make if you if you're seeing yourself in the mirror, Mike, as you described, you're going you know what I really do see some of the things are resonating.

Pat Mancuso 

The first thing you gotta do is make a decision that I'm going to make a change. The second thing you got to do is make it 100% All in commitment to that change. Now you don't know what the change is going to be, but you got to make a commitment to the change. Then the third thing that I tell people they need to do is need to get clarity, you need to understand what the issues are. And usually you can't do that yourself. I once heard this said, look in the mirror, and if you have problems, you see the problem.

Mike Swenson 

Yeah, it's so funny when you're when you're talking about this, Michael Jackson song, you know, I'm starting with the man in the mirror is what you know what pops up, it's exactly that. And for those folks that love, you know, Extreme Ownership, that kind of thing, it's, it's, you've got to start with yourself.

Pat Mancuso 

The reason the reason, the company that I started, that was the leader of with other investors didn't work didn't work to where the, to the extent that we wanted to, or that any of us expected to was my fault. Like I was the leader, I was leaving. Now, were there other pieces that contribute that absolutely positively. But if I don't look, as a leader, it's a it starts with me, I'll never fix the problem. So once you know, you gotta have clarity of the problem. Now, once you ID the problem. Now, what are my potential remedies and solutions to fix it? And the problem is, most people go for the quick fix, because that's easier, it's less painful. And it's usually the wrong decision. Well, going back to this company that we met with, they have recruited Today we're looking at two consultants, myself and another consultant, and the other consultant was within the industry, they were in, I wasn't. So the other consultant led them down a path within the same industry, which was causing the same problems. And that's why they failed their their solutions, because I talked with the CEO after the back there solutions were not the right solutions to fix the problem. So my perspective.

Mike Swenson 

Well, and then too, you know, I think about as well, you know, if you, if you try to make the quick fix, you're just going to be right back where you started six months from now, a year from now, whatever it is. And so you can either choose to do the work and do it right now, or do the work and do it right. Sometime later. Yeah.

Pat Mancuso 

You know, Mike, that's, it's interesting that you say that, and I would agree with you, and that would offer this, except when you when you go back and fix it later on, you know, like you say, Okay, well, you fix it. Now, where do you fix it? You're right back where you were before, you're actually not, you're usually worse off than where you were before you usually have more impact than where you were before. And that's what people don't understand.

Mike Swenson 

You know, I wish we had more time to be able to chat about this stuff. Unfortunately, you have a podcast I do, where you can chat about this stuff, too. So for people that you know, love what you're sharing Pat and want to learn more about you and what you're doing, how can they do that?

Pat Mancuso 

So you know, the first thing is our website, www.patmancuso.com. It's www.patmancuso.com. That's where we have our consulting services, our coaching services, the things that we do for small to medium sized businesses. Our podcast in which you can find that that site as well is titled The Success Ascent, on The Success Ascent we interview entrepreneurs, CEOs of organizations, thought leaders, we've had some amazing guests, you know, CEO of Keller Williams, Mo Anderson, who led the company in high trajectory. We've had Steve Sims thought leader who hangs out with Richard Branson and Elon Musk. And, you know, so there's some just some real great people we've had on that show. And so that's the two places that they could that they could get us.

Mike Swenson 

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking your time and sharing your wisdom.

Pat Mancuso 

I appreciate it. Mike. Thanks for having me on the show.