Ep 168: Stop Guessing. Start Leading. | Eric Joern

0:00My goal is, hey, can we cut through some of this noise that happens? We sell ourselves short in the impact that this good professional help brings beyond just the delivering a tax return, delivering a financial statement, coming up with a great tax strategy or whatever it may be. Good training makes for people who become more autonomous. They make better decisions. They become more efficient long-term from a finance standpoint.

0:25You're listening to the Limitless Leadership Podcast, the podcast designed to help automotive repair shops learn how to lead, coach, train, and manage their team better by sharing proven techniques and thought-provoking interviews from industry leaders. Are you ready to transform your leadership skills by tapping into unrecognized potential to achieve limitless results? Let's get ready for liftoff. It's time to go from great to greater.

0:50Here's today's episode. Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Limitless Leadership Podcast. Before we get started, don't forget to like, comment, subscribe, do all the things you need to on social media to impact people and build leaders through this podcast. Speaking of leaders, I got a great leader sitting in front of me right now. Uh, my friend Eric Jorn, he is a partner and chief revenue officer with Kaizen CPAs and Advisors.

1:23Eric, thanks for being here, man. Promotive is a recruiting partner built specifically for the automotive aftermarket, giving shops a smarter and more reliable way to hire technicians. Their team brings decades of industry experience together with real recruiting expertise, so they not only understand the work, you can trust that they understand your shop. Promotive handles every part of the hiring process. They source talent proactively, screen candidates thoroughly, and guide them through a structured, high-touch experience.

1:49Shops only meet candidates who are qualified, aligned, and ready to move. Shops partner with Promotive because they communicate clearly, they move quickly, and take ownership of the hiring process. They don't just forward resumes, they act like a true recruiting arm for your business. To learn more or start a search, visit gopromotive.com. Book a call, submit an opening, and see how Promotive helps shops hire better.

2:14This episode is brought to you by Limitless Leadership because great teams don't happen by accident. They're led on purpose. If you're tired of wearing all the hats, putting out fires, and wondering why your team won't step up, Limitless Leadership is for you. They help leaders transition from player to coach who develop people and multiply impact through in-person or online leadership training like the Limitless Leadership Blueprint or their Roots to Results coaching method.

2:38Their services are designed to help you tap into unrecognized potential to achieve limitless results and help you create safety and trust in order to provide clarity and direction. So if you're ready to stop managing chaos and start leading with purpose, head to limitlessleadership.co to book a complimentary discovery call today. Josh, thanks for having me on. I'm super excited to talk about this subject because every day I'm trying to grow better as a leader and I do some things right.

3:06I still have a lot to work on, but what better forum than just a conversation about leadership to continue to grow? Love it. And you know, I, and I gotta apologize, I failed to mention one of your titles, your new title. You're a podcast host. So that's right. That's right. I've done it once before, but we are, we're starting a new podcast, actually should be launching here probably in the next month or so called Under the Hood CPA.

3:37What I've found is there is a lot of noise in the industry around a lot of especially financial concepts, you know, so I spent some time on the Facebook groups, some of the different forums, and I just hear a lot of chatter about things. And I'll hear some, you know, people will ask advice that really they're questions you should ask your CPA.

3:56Good. Half the questions, go ask your CPA or answers, go ask your CPA. Awesome. That's great. Some of the answers though, man, you could get stuck into some major issues if you listen to the other advice on there. So my goal is, hey, can we cut through some of this noise that happens? Talk about some of these different scenarios and bring on, you know, hey, if it's not an expertise that I have, I'm going to bring on somebody else that does bring that expertise within it.

4:23And we'll talk about both the financial and the operational aspects to those questions. Love that. But our goal is just to answer questions for people out there because again, there is a lot of noise in the public realm. We want to cut through that and really bring the truths to it. Well, you know, having gotten to know you a little bit more over the last year or so and connecting with you at different conferences and different events and just staying in touch, man.

4:46I, I really admire and respect what you do, uh, what Kaizen does and, and how you do it. And so if you would share with the audience exactly those things, who are you, what you do, and how you do it? Yeah, so I'm a, I'm a partner. Uh, you, you gave me a nice little introduction there. Um, but what's our goal? What does Kaizen do, right?

5:07Our goal is to, to help create better shops, right? Not just shops, but also small businesses. At the end of the day, shops are still small businesses. We don't work exclusively with shops. We specialize in it. We work with all businesses, all small businesses. We're rooted as a small business accounting firm. We found that, hey, connecting finance with operations, with execution and leadership, all those things really turn business owners into better shop owners, or they turn people into better business owners, right?

5:39And running a better business makes a better life for your employees, right? Not just me as the owner. We don't take all the wealth and all the gains from that, right? We share that with our team through bonuses, training, a better workplace, better environment. But then what does that create? A better product for our customers. And a better product for our customers creates a better business in the community.

6:00And a better business in the community creates a better community. And we really have this long, I think sometimes we as practitioners, whether we're doing coaching, whether we're doing accounting and finance and tax or financial advisory, whatever it may be, we sell ourselves short in the impact that this good professional help brings beyond just the, you know, delivering a tax return, delivering a financial statement, coming up with a great tax strategy or whatever it may be, right?

6:29All these things contribute to building a better community, and that's truly what we believe that we're doing here. That's powerful. Well, I, and I'll confirm that. I, I think you guys do a fantastic job of doing it. How did you get into this line of work? How did you, uh, how did this, how did this, uh, whole kaizen thing happen? Yeah. Yeah.

6:48Uh, good little story. So running a shop is hard enough without juggling 5 different tools that don't talk to each other. TechMetric is the all-in-one auto repair platform that brings every part of your business together, shop management, payments, and marketing in one place with one login and one team behind you. Your service advisors write estimates faster, your technicians stay focused in the bay, and your customers get a consistent experience every time they walk through the door.

7:11And when the day is done, payments reconcile automatically and your marketing runs in the background. No extra work required. That's auto repair done right. Learn more at techmetric.com or use the link in the show notes. Most shops are leaving money on the floor because their existing techs aren't ramping fast enough aren't dispatched to the right jobs, and don't have a clear path keeping them engaged and in the bay.

7:32MentorMentee was built to change that. For less than $5 a day per technician, MentorMentee helps increase technician efficiency and measurably improve the 2 KPIs that matter most: absorption rate and effective labor rate. Their platform gives your junior technicians a structured, transparent career pathway with every skill level mapped, every milestone tracked, and every competency verified. It's proven effective. As one mentor-mentee client shared, they improved key metrics on customer pay work, including a 12% increase in effective labor rate, an 8% increase in hours per repair order, a 26% increase in dollars per repair order, and a 50% reduction in development time for apprentice techs, cutting time to B-level proficiency from 5 years to 2 to 3 years.

8:18According to this client, the program pays for itself. What else can you point to that delivers these operational outcomes, more throughput, better bay utilization, and labor gross profit you can see on the P&L? The efficiency gains fund the program. If these numbers are the kind of movement you're trying to make in your shop, use the link in the description to schedule a demo or visit mentormentee.com.

8:43My background, I, uh, when I was in college, I got a job as a porter at a car dealer. They didn't have enough work for just porter duties. I saw the service advisors, they were super busy. So I just kept asking, hey, what can I do to help? What can I do to help? One day, one of them gave me an estimate and said, go sell this to this customer.

9:06So I walked over to the customer and I looked down at the estimate and they needed a water pump. And I did, at that point in time, I didn't really understand what a water pump actually did. And they asked me, so what's going on? What's wrong with it? And I got the answer kind of halfway right. I said it pumps water to cool the engine, not coolant.

9:25So I had the right idea, but they bought it, right? Because I said, hey, this is what you need to prevent your vehicle from overheating and it's leaking. We don't know when it's going to completely go. And next thing you know, they said, hey, we want to expand our night hours. So I ran our night service department, which was really meant for pickups and drop-offs.

9:48But maybe about a year after doing that, I moved on to working the day shift, eventually sold over $1 million a year on average as a service advisor. I finished school. I had 2 paths I could really pursue. I graduated with a finance degree, so I could go off in corporate. I actually, I worked, I had Tuesdays off when I worked at the dealer, and I did an internship on that one day off that I had during the week while I was still in school full-time.

10:24And I said, man, corporate accounting is not for me. I still want to work with people. I want to advise people. That's really what I truly enjoyed doing. It's beyond just, I don't enjoy as much of, hey, put me in the corner and go work on the, you know, work on a spreadsheet, work on a tax return, whatever it may be. Really like to find what we know and the knowledge that we have and how do we apply that to somebody to help them succeed.

10:47So ultimately, I had an opportunity to go work for Toyota corporate. I didn't want to go move to Torrance, California. And at the time, that's the district service and parts manager role. And that's on like a, you could be moved to wherever, whatever territory is needed every 5 years. Wasn't really the lifestyle I was looking for. So I ended up going and working for a small business accounting firm that was in the local town that I lived in after I graduated.

11:14And with that, they were focused on working with small business owners. And when I interviewed with them, that resonated with me. My dad was a concrete contractor. Actually, me and him on my day off, one of the days we installed a Hunter alignment rack. We did the We did the pad and leveling and everything for that, and then Hunter came in and installed the actual rack.

11:36But he was a small business owner. That's always been in my life, in my blood. So when I learned that that's what they dealt with is only small business owners, and we didn't just do tax returns, we delivered a monthly financial, and the firm was really rooted in delivering a monthly financial first and then the tax return second, that resonated with me.

11:56So I spent years, I got my CPA license, went down the traditional route of just learning all these different things, working with all sorts of different businesses, which was really great exposure for me because I worked with people who were scaling multiple franchisee units. So I got a good understanding of how does that work. We worked with some businesses that were doing some, a little bit more complex M&A activity, went and got some formal education in the M&A space.

12:23And all these things happened to then open up into the fold in the automotive realm. So I went to the owner of the firm who's now my partner, Clay, which is now, this is, I'm eventually transitioning the firm from him. So we'll be third generation at that point. And I said, hey, I have a lot of knowledge in the automotive space from my 5 years that I did writing service, being held accountable to KPIs, standards, processes.

12:53And I said, hey, we could maybe bring what we're doing for businesses across the realm, mix it with some automotive flavor to it. And I think we could be a differentiator in this space. So I went to an ASA conference out in Texas, met a few people. Bill Haas was probably one of the main people who kind of took me under his wing.

13:15He grabbed me by my neck and started introducing me to everyone. Got me my first real automotive client that's focused on performance improvement and slowly worked with him, spent some time trying to do my own research. I got my accredited automotive certification from AMI online. I spent a lot of time watching YouTube videos. Bob Cooper from Elite back when had a ton of content on YouTube.

13:46Aaron Stokes had a ton of stuff on YouTube. Um, and now it's down to the point where, hey, the— we started going out and teaching, sharing our knowledge across the industry, whether it was, uh— so I did join the ASA Illinois chapter at the time. That became Midwest Auto Care Alliance. Uh, I became a chapter president for the Chicagoland chapter. I've taught it now at Vision, uh, ASAX50, uh, STX.

14:15Recently Tectonic. And then we just recently did a 2-day financial intensive course with the Institute, which that was by far the most robust training we've provided to the market. But man, it is, nothing's more gratifying than just sharing your knowledge and then seeing it click for somebody and knowing that, hey, I just made a huge change or created a huge opportunity for that business owner.

14:40That's huge. You know, I, first of all, thank you for sharing all that, Eric. Shout out to Bill Hosch. Shout out to the Institute and Cecil and Wayne and Kent and the crew there. Michael leading the leadership intensive. These are some true industry difference makers. These are some true change agents. And speaking of change agents, that's exactly what you are, Eric. I mean, the way that you first saw the opportunity, you went to Clay, shared the opportunity, and then said, look, what if we do this and let's just see where it goes?

15:14And then you take the reins, take the bull by the horn, if you will, and you run with it. That's leadership. I mean, that truly is saying, look, I have been empowered by Clay to bring him an idea because I think it's important that our team members' voices are heard, their opinions matter, their ideas are considered. And Clay created an environment, a safe space, place, and platform for you to go and bring him this idea, and he's empowering you to go and run with it.

15:40And that's exactly what you did. And because of that, you guys have been able to find an incredible niche in this industry. Let's just get right to one of the first questions I ask every guest on this podcast, which is about leadership specifically. Eric, what does leadership mean to you? Yeah, so leadership, My, my just off-the-cuff definition of it is, hey, did I provide somebody with the, with the resources, the training, and the process and the support needed to be successful?

16:11Right? It's up to me to provide them with the tools to be successful. If I'm doing that right, that is giving them leadership. And you brought up a great example, right? Clay said, hey, I'll give you the platform. I'll write the check for you to go out to these conferences. Go, go get your education here. Um, and support, right? And, uh, and obviously he couldn't train me on, on, on knowing the numbers of an automotive repair shop, but he said, hey, I will support you going to find third-party education for that.

16:38And all those things, right? Aligns exactly with what I just said. And, and it's allowed us to, to really enter the space and become successful. So it's 2026. We live in a world right now where we can get anything we want with the click of a mouse. I mean, it, like, We're not hurting for resources. So the reason I'm sharing this is because we have the resources, but a lot of us are not resourceful.

17:02And you mentioned having, as a leader, like being able to equip my team members with the resources, with the tools necessary, with the training to do their job and to master their craft. Let's talk about what training really looks like, because offline you and I had a just brief discussion about what, about training and And I, I think this is important to touch on because you and I both believe in the power of training, Eric, and we both know that training is, should not be treated like a one-time thing.

17:33There, there's a lot of, uh, a lot of, um, organizations in, in many industries, not just automotive, but in many industries where they'll, they'll say, all right, yeah, well, I sent my team to training 6 months ago and I can't, and I don't understand why they're not getting it. And the idea is, Training should be treated like a, an initial practice for a team.

17:53And what happens beyond that training? Well, it's, it's more practice. Like, uh, you know, as we get into football season, for, I like to use football as an example. As we get into football season, the, we're gonna have training camp and then, and then we have these practices. Well, the, the, the team, the team, the players are not gonna go to practice 1 or 2 times and then just play in the games the rest of the year.

18:14It's practice, practice, practice, practice, then a game. It's practice, practice, practice, practice, then a game. Can you speak to the importance of training and what training could and should look like, not just in this industry, but in any industry for the, for the sake of growth and development? Yeah. Yeah. So one of the fallacies I think that most people get with training is that, hey, it's costing me money.

18:36I'm taking somebody out of production for a period of time. And they have to see an ROI out of it, right? I think that's shortsighted, right? It's sometimes thinking about today's dollar instead of tomorrow's dollar. Good training makes for people who become more autonomous. They make better decisions. They become more efficient long-term from a finance standpoint. You know, if we do so wrong by not investing in that training and 100%, you hit it on the head, right?

19:05Training doesn't It's not a one-time event. We need to always be training. So in our firm, one of our core values is really focused on having a growth mindset. Our name Kaizen literally means continuous improvement, right? I was going to say, you can't have the name Kaizen and not have a growth mindset. 100%. Yeah, that would be a little bit ironic. But we, so with our team, we do We do a spring and we do a fall 2-day offsite.

19:38And that's really kind of our deep dive focus sessions. And then we send everybody to a 2-day tax school as well. That's preparing tax returns. That's 6 days right there of full days of commitment of training. It's during the week. We're not making people do it on their own time. And that is like our firm-sponsored mandatory training. Beyond that, we host a weekly, we call it Gather and Grow.

20:01Opportunity for our team to go come together. We do a, say, 1-hour webinar. Everybody has a certain amount of CPE requirements depending on their role in the firm. But for the most part, we satisfy it with a firm-sponsored training alone. One of the, one of the pursuits we're now trying to get into is how do we spend some more time with our people to set— instead of saying you all take the same training, how do we make training more customized?

20:28Right? Hey, what do you need help with? Where, and where can we go find the proper training to really help either shore up some of your deficiencies or to accelerate some of your strengths? Right? So sometimes it's not just fixing the things that you might not do so well, but can we double down on the things that you do super well? And can somebody else support you on the things that you might not do well?

20:51Eric, one thing that you were touching on, whether you realize it or not, you're alluding to the power of connection. And we connect through authenticity, humility, and vulnerability. When we connect, we create engagement. And, and, and, and a creation of engagement increases performance. We know, we know that engaged team members perform better. And statistically speaking, studies show that 77% of team members are disengaged at work.

21:15They're disengaged cuz they don't feel recognized. They don't feel heard, valued, respected, cared for, loved. And we can connect through this customizable, uh, I, I like, you're, you're really alluding to one-on-ones. And, you know, one of the things that Limitless Leadership does from a leadership coaching perspective is we, we talk about the power of one-on-ones and how there are 3 types of meetings that we can provide for our team members.

21:40There's personal, there's personnel, and there's performance. And one-on-ones fall under the personal side of things where one-on-ones may not even be discu— we may, may not even be discussing work-related things. On a one-on-one. Now, there's, there's, there's a time and place for it. One-on-ones are not necessarily the time and place. I'm not saying it's, it's a bad thing to talk about work during a one-on-one, but the one-on-ones are for this person to feel heard, understood.

22:04And sometimes it might just be listening to how they're doing up here and in here. If you're listening to this podcast, I'm pointing to my head and pointing to my heart, because when I ask the question of, hey Eric, how are you doing? I'm not necessarily asking you for you to share all the KPIs and the stats and the numbers and the content.

22:21I'm at— I'm, I'm seeking connection. So I'm asking, how are you doing up here, my head, and in here, my heart? It's, it's about connecting with a heart. It's about connecting with this person through authenticity, humility, and vulnerability in order to create engagement. I'm curious, I'm gonna put you on the spot here. You know, one of the things that, that we talk— that we coach our, our own clients on is the power of one-on-ones.

22:44Do you guys have one-on-ones? And if so, what do they look like? Yeah, so we, uh, we run on EOS, uh, the EOS framework. So we do a quarterly one-on-one, um, and that is from a, uh, again, right, that is meant to be higher-level connection, right? Am I, uh, do you have the, the tool, really the tools, the training, everything available? But it all opens up with, how are you doing, right?

23:09That is a very important question of, yeah, how are things How are things doing? One of the most amazing things that we do, that we're lucky to do as leaders in businesses, is the fact that we get to help people on their human side. We've had countless employees that have come to us with some level of personal struggle, and man, that's our opportunity as a leader to step up to the plate and do whatever we can to support them through that.

23:37And we've done that across our team through whatever they may have gone through, whether it's a divorce, Maybe they're having trouble with their kids and they need to make sure even, hey, I just need to make sure my kids get on the bus, or maybe this time that I need to spend with my family's so important, right? We're fortunate that we can work in a world where you can work flexibly.

23:58Our team's across 15 different states. It might even be more now. And that we're able to work a little bit more flexible hours. Shops unfortunately are often chained to the brick and mortar and the, hey, you know, 9 to 5 or 10, 8 to 6 or whatever their hours are for their shop. So we're a little fortunate that we can be flexible in that way.

24:21But, you know, one of our CPAs, she's from Australia and, you know, her parents still live there and it's a major deal just to travel that far. But probably almost every year, she goes out there and spends about a month or so, a month to 6 weeks out there and works. Now, her time zone is completely opposite of our time zone, but you know what?

24:47Hey, we're going to find a way to make it work because we understand if you're not happy at home and you're not fulfilled personally, how can you be fulfilled professionally as well? Eric, let me ask you, because I don't want to glaze over this, and if you're listening to this episode, you can still watch this episode on YouTube at The Bearded Leader is where you can find this episode and many more.

25:07But if you're listening and you're thinking, well, Eric, that sounds great, but, but I work in the shop and, and, and I can't show up for my team members personally. You and I both know that's, that's, that's a limiting belief because there are ways that we can show up for them, not just professionally, but also personally. Could you speak to some ideas that you have?

25:28Or, I mean, you, you, you worked in the shop before at, at the dealership. Talk about what it looks like to really show up for someone personally, not just professionally. In the confined, if you will, confined hours that we, that we have, that we operate within. Yeah. Yeah. And really the confined hours, it's really not, shouldn't be that much of a limiting factor, right?

25:47Because somebody obviously extended, an extended absence is a challenge for anybody to have to deal with if that has to happen. Well, let's just say, hey, like, you know, I'm a technician and I really, I need to be that person that gets my kids on the bus and that's super important to me. Well, is there a way that the other people on our team or me as a leader can step in and make sure that their schedules fit in a way?

26:12I mean, is that really going to change your customer's perception? If anything, it should improve your customer's perception of you. I know obviously, right, you want to be accommodating, you want to be available for customers as much as possible, but man, we're dealing with humans, right? Where it's a human interaction regardless. If we need to change anything or amend anything. I mean, somebody can come and work on a car, you know, if they need to be there before and after school, and then they come back to the shop, you know, whatever that needs to happen should be able to happen.

26:42And it's the benefit of having a— as you scale and you grow a team, right, that having that physical person there, it becomes a little bit more flexible. But if you're a smaller shop, right, you can still also amend your hours. You can change. Hey, your days don't have to every day have to be exactly the same. And man, if doing a good job for your customers, if you're doing the right thing for your employees, they're going to do the right thing for your customers.

27:08Your customers are going to be willing to amend to your system, your process to have them served. I mean, I think about my wife and how when she's gone to get her hair done and she's using somebody and they move a salon or they have kids and they change their hours and it doesn't necessarily It becomes less convenient. But guess what? She has a great human connection with that person.

27:30They do an excellent job in serving her. And guess what? She's going to go out of her way to continue to see that and work with that person because she has that human connection. She knows that she's going to do a great job. And oftentimes we're just stuck with head trash of if we don't do what is always the norm, then I'm going to lose my customers or something else isn't going to work, or this person in the shop is going to be jealous because I gave, you know, the other person a different schedule.

27:58But if, if you're willing to create that vulnerability and that human connection within your shop, there's no doubt that everybody will buy into that process and that other person will have something that they will deal with personally, that they know now that the shop will find a way to have their back. I could not agree more with what you just shared, and I want to just take a moment and highlight and honor you for a moment, Eric.

28:21Everything you just shared is the epitome of a growth mindset. I mean, the, the, the, and, and the, you know, the fact that, that having a growth mindset is even one of Kaizen's core values, obviously. I mean, you said the, the definition of Kaizen is continuous improvement, but, but it, it's one thing to have it on your wall. It's another thing to be living it.

28:41You know, like if, if we have our core values on our wall, I mean, I mean, it's some, some of you listening may not be surprised by this, but The amount of folks who I work with and I ask, I'll ask, hey, what, you know, what is your mission statement or what are your core values? And, and a lot of people, um, either don't have them or if they do, they don't know what they are.

29:00And this is not necessarily a knock on that person. I mean, a lot of our clients that we work with, um, are not the business owner themself. Uh, sometimes it's team members. And to me, this is an opportunity for leadership. Um, how are we influencing our team members? How are we creating buy-in? How are we sharing the why? Because when the why is clear, the how is easy.

29:18Ultimately, what does— what is our purpose here? And the more we have these, the more we make these knowledgeable and the more we make these something that everyone understands and recognizes and not just knows but lives, that's when we can start implementing the growth mindset. And everything you shared is a growth mindset. For someone listening who may not fully understand what a growth mindset is or what it could look like.

29:47To me, there's, there's, you know, the opposite is a fixed mindset. You have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset. So one example I would personally give is things that we have to do. Well, I, I have to take my kids to school. I have to go, uh, to work today. I have to go, you know, to the, to the DMV to wait in line to get my license renewed.

30:07No, it's a get-to moment. Yeah, yeah, it may, it may not be fun, but it's a get-to moment. I, it's a get-to versus a have-to. And this mindset, it changes the way that we view things, which subsequently changes the way that we do things. Can you speak to more of the growth mindset, what it is and what it could look like? Yeah, yeah, totally.

30:25I mean, we even have that as a client acceptance criteria, right? Is, and if that doesn't mean necessarily that I want to go from, you know, $1 million to $2 million in revenue, or I want to go from $100,000 in profit to $300,000 in profit. It's not just financially driven, it's their mindset as a, as a business owner, right? So one of the things that we do is we have our— some systems and processes in working with all the shops that we've worked with that works out really well.

30:55And what we, what we want to do is install some of those things when we work with them if they're not willing to do that, or maybe they're not super excited about jumping on a video call with somebody or being held accountable. I mean, these are all little things that, you know, they're all growth mindsets. And hey, if I want to do better, if I want to improve, whether it's personally, professionally, financially, right?

31:19It's really, it's, can I take change, make change for the better? And that's actually the root of the word Kaizen is change better. So, and that's where that growth mindset, continuous improvement really, really comes into play. That's so good, man. You, you, you, you've used the word accountable twice on this, on this episode. And, and I think because of it, I want to just share the, the power of accountability and, and how accountability is actually a great thing.

31:46It's an opportunity, not an inconvenience. It's a blessing, not a burden, because accountability is not calling you out. It's calling you up. And when we can hold each other, and it starts with us, we hold ourselves accountable first. So accountability, accountability starts with us and then it bleeds into our team and, and even bleeds into the guest experience because we can hold our guests accountable as well.

32:07We're setting and keeping boundaries. We're, we're showing them what true servant leadership looks like across the board. So I just wanna again highlight you for, for a moment, Eric, and, and, and say, I, I like that you're bringing up the word accountability. My hope is that our audience listening recognizes accountability is a good thing, and when we don't hold each other accountable, It is one of the reasons why we continually get stuck, and that's where the growth mindset comes into place.

32:34Let me ask you, Eric, the best advice that you've ever received from a coach or a mentor, how would you answer that question? Yeah, so the best advice I've gotten, and I'll honestly give it a, it's a spattering of advice because I've heard it enough and enough. Probably one of the most in-depth times I've heard the advice was I did a podcast with Cecil and he talks about his upbringing, when he worked and ran shops.

33:08And it is really around, hey, our time is so limited and you need to be disciplined with that time and you need to pick and choose and prioritize things. And he talked a lot about how I didn't get to spend as much time with my family as I wanted. And, I've really taken that to heart and everything that now comes across my plate, I think about it, right?

33:31Is this the greatest— A, not just is it the greatest most best use of my time, but I also understand now I am sacrificing the opportunity for something else when I get involved and I do and execute something. So, my son's now just over 2 years old and Man, the countless pieces of advice that I've gotten is it goes by so fast, don't blink.

33:54But ultimately, right, that boiled down to our time is such a precious resource, so we need to make sure we spend it wisely. So that's why I've taken a framework or a mindset that we need to be very intentional with all the things that we do, even down to the— we started talking about training. Right? And when you start doing training to have training without, say, follow-up, without structure, without formalities in it and takeaways, executionables, all those things, right?

34:25You can go and put on— you can go out and talk in front of a group of people and it goes nowhere if you don't make sure you seed those actionables, those takeaways, those opportunities. And then really that was wasted time, right? That's time that we could have served a client. That's time I could have spent with my son. That's time that you could spend grow, you know, going through a learning session or training session that's more intentional that you've, you could have grown from.

34:49Yeah, that's so good. Knowledge without action is just information. Um, it's, you know, it's the amount of trainings that we have, the amount of, um, meetings that we have. I mean, I, I love starting, I love when I, when I talk about meetings in a training that I do is I'll open by saying meetings are a massive waste of time. And I just wait to see the faces and the, like, I can't believe he said that.

35:11Well, they are, they're a waste of time. If you don't take action beyond, beyond the meetings or beyond the training. So I, I really appreciate and admire the fact that you, you get that, you live that. Um, man, look, I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump on the bandwagon of the other folks. Time goes by quick. And, you know, I remember to this day, um, when, when all of my kids were born, but, but I'm, I'm thinking about my oldest specifically cuz she just turned 15 and it feels like just yesterday when, when she was, was born.

35:39And it's, man, it goes by fi— uh, fast. So enjoy, Enjoy that time. It's precious time. And I really admire and respect the fact that you're setting and keeping boundaries for your family the way that you do. 2 more questions. Let's talk about Under the Hood CPA. Plug the podcast. When are you guys airing? When can we tune in? Where can we tune in?

35:59What does it look like? Yeah. Yeah. So we're going to release an episode every week. We're shooting for June as our launch date. We're recording as well. Not literally as we speak, but we have recordings happening as early as this week. So we'll get a few under our belt. It's going to be launched across all the standard podcast forms. We'll have video on YouTube.

36:24We'll have Spotify, Apple Podcasts, you know, the normal feeds. We'll be posting clips from it on the socials. You'll be able to find us on Under the Hood CPA once we go live. Uh, if you go to our website, kaizencpas.com, we do have a landing page for the podcast. So you can also subscribe to be added to that list, uh, once we, uh, once we get the launch going.

36:50Um, and we'll, we're doing it in partnership with, uh, Lucas and David from Changing the Industry Podcast. So if you're listening to their podcast, you'll, you'll be able to circle back to, uh, to catching Under the Hood CPA as well. Excellent. So we're, we're, if we're, we're recording this episode in May, by the time it releases, it will be July. So, um, hopefully, in fact, you, you, everything, everything you just shared should be up and running live and ready to go.

37:15Personally, I am excited for you, man. I'm proud of you. I think this is awesome. We, the industry needs it. Um, you guys are awesome at what you do. Uh, let's share with the audience, how can we get in touch with you and Kaizen? Yeah. Yeah, totally. Um, best, best place is our website. Our website shares a ton of information about who we are, what we do, how we serve, our process.

37:39We want to answer as many questions, uh, us as buyers, right? Naturally today, we want to have as many questions answered before we go and we meet with somebody and we talk to somebody. So we followed a marketing principle from a book called They Ask, You Answer by Marcus Sheridan. He also released a follow-up book called Endless Customers, and, and it's 100% around how can we address everything that you want to know prior to picking up the phone and calling?

38:04Because oftentimes we lack action because we don't have enough facts before we're ready to make that decision. So, um, I mean, we have a lot about our pricing, how we price, so you can understand pricing methodology. People oftentimes are afraid to share pricing because we naturally have fear of it. We take the opposite approach and say, hey, how transparent can we be with it?

38:24Okay, we want to know We want to share exactly what our process looks like. So what is our onboarding process? How does that change? How does that look and feel? And what do I have to do and what should I expect for that? And then what does it look like after I'm through that initial change process or that onboarding process and working with us?

38:42Again, we want to be super transparent. We have tools, we have resources. Eric, hang on, hang on, Eric. I think I may have just lost your audio. Can you hear the fuzz or is that just me? I think that's just you. I think I'm— see, now I can't even hear you. So if, if, um, I think that might be on your end cuz, uh, can't, can't hear you.

39:01Um, I don't, I don't know if Riverside's gonna pick this up. We, I, I record the episodes through Riverside, so hey, we're gonna find out. Um, I mean, we, we were coming on the tail end of the episode anyway. I do wanna, I do, I do wanna make sure that the audience knows what website you guys have. I, I can't imagine it's not kaizen.com, is it?

39:19I mean, if you guys go to kaizen.com. Yep, kaizencpas.com. So I'm— I can't hear you, but I'm thinking, is it— so give me a thumbs up. Is it kaizencpa.com? Just add an S to it. Oh my goodness. Kaizen CPAs. Yep, you got it. Kaizen CPAs. Okay, so yeah, I've said— sorry, if you guys— I'm, I'm, I'm curious to see how this episode's gonna, gonna wind up.

39:43So it's Kaizen, that's K-A-I-Z-E-N cpas.com. Good. All right, he's giving me a thumbs up. Um, yeah, for whatever reason, the audio cut out. Uh, Eric, I'll just say, man, I know you can hear me, I can't hear you, but thank you for being on the Limitless Leadership Podcast. It's good to get these, the, these, uh, these mistakes or these kinks out of the way before you go live for Under the CPA.

40:07Uh, and thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Limitless Leadership Podcast. As you know, we look to transform our leadership skills by tapping into unrecognized potential to achieve limitless results. So thanks again, everyone. Have a great day. Don't forget to smile today. Tell your loved ones how much they mean to you. I'm Josh Parnell reminding you to keep leading well.