0:05.040

Traci: Hi everyone, welcome to Leading the Frontline sponsored by Legion. Thank you so much for being here for our very first episode. Don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you’re catching this episode. Whether you’re watching or listening, you’re going to have a fabulous experience either way. And with me, I am joined by Kevin Ertell, who is the former VP of Global Operations at Nike. Kevin brings deep expertise in leading digital and operational transformations at scale. Now the founder of Mistere Consulting, he advises companies on strategic technology decisions, global execution, and process optimization. With prior leadership roles at Sur La Table, Borders, and ForeSee, Kevin offers a global lens on navigating change and improving operational performance. Kevin, welcome.

Kevin: Hi, how are you Traci? Great to be here.

Traci: I’m doing well. First episode!

Kevin: I know. No pressure or anything. I mean, jeez.

Traci: I know. All the pressure. All the pressure. No. We’re really excited to have you. And actually, since it is the first episode, I should let you know—and I should let the listeners know—that we’re going to ask some pretty standard questions in the very beginning and at the very end for every single guest that we have on the show. And so, the first two questions that you’re going to answer are just some get-to-know-you questions. Nothing too crazy. I’m going to save that for the middle of the show.

Kevin: Okay.

Traci: Yeah. So, just, you know, buckle up everybody. It’s going to get wild. No, just kidding. What was your very first hourly job? We would love to know.

Kevin: Uh, so my first hourly job, I was only 14, and it was at Orange Julius in the mall. If you remember those places—

Traci: Very vaguely.

Kevin: Yeah. I mean, it was like an orange drink, you know. But what I learned working there, in the back, is when you made the drink, it was a little bit of orange, a little bit of water, and a whole ton of sugar.

Traci: I was waiting for that. Like a cup of sugar?

Kevin: It was. You know, I hadn’t quite hit my growth spurt yet. I think I was only like 5’2” at the time. I was 14, and it was a 50 lb bag of sugar. I had to stand up on a ladder and pour it in, which was a major challenge for me.

Traci: It sounds like maybe it was a good thing that OSHA wasn’t called at that time. But I mean—you did it.

Kevin: I did it. No, I mean for the rest of—I’m 5’1”, so I never had the growth spurt.

Traci: So, at least you were able to look back, reflect, and say, “I’ve grown a bit since then.” But that’s really cool. What was it like working in a mall? Did you have to get dropped off, I assume, at 14?

Kevin: Yeah. Got dropped off by my parents, you know. But it was in the mall. I was working with mostly people not much older than me, but you know, 16- or 17-year-olds. Big people. Yeah. Right. They were adults. Also, like the richest guy in my class—because as a freshman in high school, I had a job and I had money and nobody else did.

Traci: So, you were able to buy your lunch. You didn’t have to go searching through your parents’ couch for quarters and change.

Kevin: Yeah. That’s right.

Traci: Which I don’t even think happens anymore with Apple Pay and things like that.

Yeah. Cash.

Traci:  Those were the good old days, right?

Kevin: Yeah. Exactly.

3:04.319

Traci: Good times. Well, thank you for sharing that, and you know, obviously, our very first jobs, I think they set us up a lot for what the rest of our careers look like, even though sometimes they’re not exactly the same as what we do with the rest of our careers. But I’m curious if your first job had any relation to the rest of your career. And really, this is the second intro question for you, which is that we’d love to know a little bit more about your background and what led to your current leadership role. And so I’m kind of hoping that maybe there’s a connection to Orange Julius?

Kevin: Well, it’s probably not Orange Julius, but it’s a different hourly job. When I was a senior in high school, I started working at Tower Records. And Tower Records was amazing and absolutely formative to my career. I actually started as a clerk and I left 20 years later as a Senior Vice President.Wow. So that was an amazing job and Tower really, you know, believed in promoting within. So I started as a clerk. I got progressively bigger jobs within the store. Got a chance to buy inventory. I became a supervisor, became an assistant manager, and then I became a manager. And actually, I was at the time, the youngest manager in the chain. I was 21 years old, which looking back, I cannot believe at 21 I was doing that, you know, but I was running a store. And this is the amazing thing to me about retail and Tower in particular. I had a lot of responsibility. I owned the P&L of that store. I hired all the people, trained the people, bought the inventory, did the local marketing. You know, if the plumbing was broken, I had to figure out how to get that fixed.

Traci: Oh god, we hope that plumbing is never broken, right? 

Kevin: It happens, you know. But that was such an amazing thing. This is what I love about retail. Like, you can get these responsibilities as a store manager that are so important for you in your entire career. And so I was able to do that and gain tons of experience starting at 21 years old as a manager, and I built on that. I eventually took a job in the corporate offices of Tower working in tech because we had a computer in the store and I got good at it. Not because I had any actual training on it, you know, but again I got to have a chance at these experiences. And this was in the early 90s. By the end of the 90s, e-commerce started to become a thing. And here I was, this guy who had retail background and technology background. E-commerce was perfect for me. I initially led the team that built towerrecords.com. And then I eventually became the senior vice president of tower.com. That was starting in the late 90s and then into the early 2000s. Amazing, you know, ability to do it. And it started, to your point, from an hourly job on the floor, you know, as a clerk. And it’s actually something I’ve never forgotten. And I think it gives me an advantage, a lot of times, over people who came out of college and went straight into a corporate role because I know the nuances of what it’s like to be face to face with a customer, unloading a truck, or cleaning out the understocks or whatever. All that kind of stuff has been really meaningful throughout my career.

6:22.319

Traci: That’s so amazing. And I’m a former retailer also. And I think everything that you said is so spot on because there is that relationship and correlation between understanding what the day-to-day in retail especially looks like to then being able to translate that to a really successful corporate experience. And you build a ton of credibility when you come up through the ranks in retail. Even if you’re switching between retailers—in your case, you had quite the trajectory in one company—there’s still the moment when an employee, especially an hourly employee, sees someone who is a senior vice president or a general manager, whatever rank, who has this experience where they too were in their shoes. They’re like, “Oh, that could be me one day,” which is really inspiring, right?

Kevin: Yeah, it could be them one day. And every time I talk to anybody honestly, whether it’s in corporate or retail, I’m always telling people you should hire retail people. You should bring them in because they have experiences you don’t have. I mean, store managers many times have 50, 60—even over 120 employees. There are a lot of corporate managers that never have that big of a team.

Traci: Right. Some companies are that size entirely.

Kevin: Exactly. Right. And so, you know, you learn some things there that you don’t really get coming up through the ranks maybe as a merchandiser. Nothing wrong with that, but I’m just saying there’s experiences that you can get from the store. And people who come from stores have this amazing array of experiences that are super valuable.

Traci: Yeah, totally. I agree. I fully co-sign everything that you’re saying.

Kevin: Nice. 

Traci: And we love agreement. 

Kevin: Yes.

Traci: You know, something that I noticed when I was reading through your website—if you saw some analytics go up, it was me—is that you’re really passionate about leadership. There was one piece, maybe a blog, I hope I’m not mis-categorizing, but something really caught my eye. There was a blog about why the best leaders start in the back row, and when I tell you I’ve been thinking about this all week, I was like, “I can’t wait to talk to Kevin about this article,” that you wrote, by the way, for anyone listening. You start off by saying Steve Jobs, Serena Williams, Yo-Yo Ma—different field, same formula. And you go on to talk about how the best leaders are world-class followers. And when I tell you I’ve been obsessed with this notion—that the best way to be the leader that you want to be is to emulate the person that’s doing it before you in a way that is really profound. You quote Aristotle. Actually, like I said, it always comes back to Taylor Swift—we were talking about this before we started. She specifically says “you know how to ball, I know Aristotle” in one of her songs. Anyway, let me not digress here. You said Aristotle is quoted as saying, “He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader.” So when I reflect on what you say in this post, it is that the best in every field emulate someone that came before them and try to do it the same, if not better, and they ultimately hopefully achieve that. I want to know what that means to you as a leader. Is there someone that you have identified in your career who you thought, “I have to be like them, but I’m going to do it better”? 

9:56.080

Kevin: Yeah. First of all, thanks for reading all that. That’s great.

10:00.080

Traci: No problem. I loved it. When you referenced it, I thought, “Man, I’ve got to think back—what did I write in that article?” But no pressure, like I said. It’s something I’ve believed strongly for a long time because I’ve experienced it.

00:10:12.560

Kevin: Mhm. So to answer your question a little bit, I mean, one advantage I’ve had in my career that maybe didn’t always wasn’t necessarily obvious to me was an advantage at the beginning was I’ve done a couple piece times where I led a lot of people and then I became an individual contributor and then I did that again a couple times or just different levels kind of thing. And the first time was at Tower, you know, I had been running a big store, a lot of it was the one that had like 120 people and I took this job in tech that I mentioned earlier where I was an individual contributor. But what happened then is, you know, I’d risen up the ranks and become a leader after being a star performer, whatever, that kind of thing. And I didn’t really know how to lead. I just was doing it, you know. But now I had a manager in this situation and I paid so much more attention to what he was doing. And I really was noticing what was working and what wasn’t working for him. I was noticing the things he did that motivated the team. And I noticed the things he did that maybe he thought were good, but they weren’t good. Like I’ll give you an example. He this particular manager  wasn’t he was very nice guy like really nice guy and if you were a great  performer it was great he was nice and was really awesome the problem was some people took advantage of that there were people who weren’t great at performers and they basically took advantage of him being nice and what I noticed in that moment was the effect it had on me when I saw someone who was kind of doing a poor job and they weren’t really punished for that. It hurt my morale and that was like a lesson that I learned. You know, I thought, okay, I got to remember this, you know, you know, next time I became a people leader again, I thought, okay, everybody deserves a second chance, but after that, the rest of the team deserves, honestly, for them to go. And I’ve got to get tough about that. And that was just an example of something I learned. You know, I had another boss one time who I noticed did something really impressive. came into the team. This is again in a tech team and there was a–  we had like a server room that was in the corporate office but it had windows on it and you could see into it and you could see the back of all these uh computers and just wires and just chaos, right? And so he came in and the first thing he did was tell everybody to put paper up over those so you couldn’t see in. But then he said, “Clean up those cables. This is, we need to be professional.” And so he had everybody go in and spend time cleaning it up. Now you might have initially said, “Really, is that the most important thing?” But you know what happened? He took those things. He took the paper down after they got them all cleaned up and it looked more professional. The team got treated with more respect and the team themselves became more professional and it was just like this little thing, you know, where he was like the little things matter. And so that’s just  another example of something I learned. But, you know, I’m always a student of leadership. I’m always watching other leaders still to this day. And that was my point in that blog post that people like Serena Williams, you know, don’t stop studying. They don’t stop seeing what other people are doing. They always do it because they’re always trying to learn. And I think as a leader, you never can stop learning, especially because, you know, humans are complicated. Always trying to figure out ways to be better for your team and better communicate, better work with people. I don’t think that process ever stops. It shouldn’t. It certainly shouldn’t. 

Traci: I really like what you said around, you know, being a student of leadership and really wanting to always have this focus on learning. And that’s really, I would say, pretty emblematic of a growth mindset. And when we think especially about, you know, a retail experience, retail is so fast-paced that when someone doesn’t have a growth mindset, they arguably don’t really make it past the first 3 months. They’re like, “This I’m out. This is just not going to work. Too much change, too many expectations. It’s very difficult to deal with people and customers.” And of course, there are so every industry can describe themselves that way. But when I think about your experience as a retailer and understanding from my own experience also the nuance there that growth mindset I think is really what does separate people from being individual contributors always which is always okay. Not everyone is meant to necessarily manage people, right? Because you can still be a leader, but really it separates people from who don’t necessarily become those managers that then inspire other teams compared to people who then go on to kind of do what you did which is scale in their career upward in the latter and become people managers. And you know something that I said there which I want to come back to is that leadership is and can be and should be felt whether someone is an individual contributor or not. Individual contributors contribute—How many times can I say contribute?— so much to leadership right because you know there sometimes the work that they’re doing is extremely profound also and so I think that’s where my next question for you is kind of around your leadership philosophy and your style really I mean you talked about balancing between individual contributor roles and people manager roles and kind of back and forth and having this elasticity in your career, but what is your general leadership style or philosophy? How do you approach teams and driving really high-performing teams?  

00:15:59.839

Kevin: Yeah, I actually can I go back though to what you said about leading not because it reminded me of a story that I think is valuable on that point and then we’ll come back to this one. But when I was at Nike, you know, we would do team meetings. I’d bring my whole team together and we’d have sort of off-site sessions and sometimes we’d bring in a speaker or somebody to be inspirational. And, the nice thing about Nike is you have a lot of professional athletes who work there, that kind of thing. And I had become friends with some former WNBA players who worked at Nike.  And so I asked them to come in and just talk about leadership actually. And one of them, Olivia, came in and she told this story. She used to be a star, she was a starter, star, you know, player or maybe it’s not superstar, but starter for a long time in her career. But as she got older, you know, which often happens with athletes, they sort of move to the bench and then further down the bench. And she talked about how that was hard at first, but then she realized that she had a different role on the team now, not a less important role, just a different role. And she talked about leading from the bench and the role that she was now playing, contributing to the team and with her wisdom and with her vision of what she was seeing even though she wasn’t on the court. And that speech she gave was like my team couldn’t stop talking about that. Everybody talked about it because it meant something to everybody in the room because you always have this role as a leader. Maybe you’re not a people manager, but that doesn’t keep you from leading and contributing to the team in all sorts of different ways like that. So anyways, I had to tell it was such a powerful moment and I could tell I’m moved and I only  heard a few seconds of it. It was good. It was good stuff.  So leadership style, I be honest, I struggle with that question all the time because I think to some degree my style changes based on who I’m working with because I think that’s important. You have to be adaptable and different people, different teams need different things. But overall I try to— I am deeply focused on clarity and trying to make sure all the time that I’m being clear whether that’s about a strategy, a policy, whatever. I think it’s so critically important to be  clear. Another big belief I have is to delegate the “how”. As a leader I think it’s always important to be clear about the what you know what’s the expected outcome the target what does success look like and the why you know why do we care about this I think super important to be critical about those two things and then I also think it’s important to share what I call the preapproval you know so it’s which is to me like guiding principles and constraints and if you can give a team here’s the expected outcome and success. Here’s why that matters. Our guiding principles as you’re making decisions throughout it are X, Y, and Z. And our constraints are, you know, A, B, and C.  Now, team, who is closest to the work, figure out the how, figure out how to get us there. And that’s kind of my approach all the time. And I think it  helps with clarity. it gets the best results because you know the people closest to the work understand how to do things better always than I do you know so that’s the role I think that’s really  important for a leader to play and I you know I had to learn that over the years for sure and I think a lot of people do because you when you come from being a doer and then go to be a leader you oftentimes are promoted to be a leader because you were one of the best doers right when you switch roles like that you have to change. Being a leader is a completely different skill set than being the doer. You can sabotage yourself if you try to do from the leadership position. 

Traci: Well, it’s so true. It’s kind of like I just went through a coaching with you because that is something that I also have learned and it’s uh it’s really hard especially if to your point someone is you know pretty high achieving and they’re used to getting things done really well. And that’s, you know, I think when you talk about what you’ve  learned over your career, that’s probably what has also set you apart  from other leaders, too. And I don’t want to, you know, make an assumption, but even in what you said around having to be adaptable to other people, that is so critical to being able to effectively lead people. It doesn’t matter if it’s one person or a team of 500. Every single person is different. you said at the top of this podcast that humans are complicated, right? And it’s true.  And you know when I think leaders often hit those roadblocks when they’re like, “Okay, one size fits all. One size fits all. Let’s just treat people the same.”  I mean, sure, you want consistency, but the way that we communicate, the way that we lead, the way that we manage, it all does have to be pretty elastic. And I’m curious because you obviously do have some pretty robust leadership philosophies. Did you play sports growing up?  

00:21:19.840

Kevin: I did. Yeah, I played some better than others.  I started as a baseball player and I played soccer and I played soccer u you know well into my adult life till I finally tweaked my knee at one point and just the joints. I just it’s not worth it anymore.  But now I’m super into VR fitness by the way.  

00:21:44.320

Traci: Oh, nice. That’s amazing. Do you have the treadmill one like where you stand and you walk or you just stand up? 

Kevin: I have the Yeah, you put the glasses on and then punch fake things and all that, but it’s a great workout and I travel a lot so I use it in the hotel and it’s amazing.  

00:22:00.320

Traci: That’s genius. So good. It’s a gym wherever you are. I’m going to have to tell my husband about that. That’s a great idea. I’m taking that. Wow. There’s so much to learn on this episode. I love it. 

Kevin: One I know. I know. How are the other episodes gonna compare? 

Traci: No, I mean  that’s actually really good advice. And actually speaking of VR, this is probably the best transition I can make because I’m going to ask you about some futuristic predictions here. And I don’t know if you’re a psychic or if you have psychic ability, but I’m going to ask you about some maybe some Yeah. some predictions here, but I would love to know, of course, based on your expertise and all of your experience, if there are any trends presently that are really shaping the future of leadership, especially for frontline teams and hourly workers and just overall team performance. Well, I’ll have to say the AI thing, I know it’s not directly related to leadership, but it kind of is because it’s inescapable. But I think as we think about how to  integrate AI into our worlds, we have to think about how to best use it and what’s the biggest advantage for it. And you know, it freaks people out, right? It’s going to take my job. That kind of thing. But I think that’s where, you know, as leaders, we also need to just look at it and go, okay, what is it best at? What can it help us? And how can it actually elevate us? And, you know, one of the things I think it can do really really well is get rid of the  tedium for people. the tedious stuff. It’s really good at that, right? And  yeah, down the road it it who knows where it’s going. It’s growing ridiculously fast and who knows? But right now, if it can take away tedious things from people and give them more time to do  other things, that’s really valuable. And we talk about its stores.

Kevin: One of my mantras at Nike was retail. I used to always talk about how we have to maximize time with the consumer and optimize everything else, you know, and AI is a perfect way to start to do that. like what are the things that are going  on in the store and you’re retail you understand this there’s a lot of stuff that happens in retail that is not working with the consumer but most of us when we go into retail the most fun part is working with the consumer I mean a  lot of times we work at places that we are customers of to begin with and we want to talk about the product and help people out with the product but we’re loading the truck or we’re stocking inventory we’re doing pricing or whatever scheduling you know all these kind of things and so if AI can help us with some of these things. Scheduling is a perfect example because  we sort of saw this at Nike, too, but scheduling is super tedious, right?  Beyond and you have a bunch of employees and they need to have different schedules, varying schedules, what have you. They’re switching, swapping, all this kind of stuff. Which, by the way, the more you can allow them the freedom, the happier they are. So, you want to do that, but it’s super tedious. You know, you’d go into manager offices and you’d see the post-it notes all over their computer screen and all that trying to track all this stuff, right? Time off for this person, this person’s request. 

Traci: Yeah, exactly. 

Kevin: So, AI can be great for stuff like that and you start to look at like how do you make something like scheduling, which is so complicated, easy and more helpful for everybody so they can work at the times when they’re going to be their best because it’s the time that works best for them. And even as a manager or a scheduler, you’re not spending your whole time in the back room. You’re out working with the staff. You’re working with the customers. 

Traci: That’s a great example of how you can start to take AI and maximize time with consumers and optimize everything else. 

Kevin: So stuff like that, I think, is the way to sort of look at it right now. 

Traci: Totally. You are definitely preaching to the choir here because I fully, again, agree. And although agreement is not a required part of being on the podcast, I do appreciate being in good company here because I think to your point AI really even outside of AI, any new technology can sometimes be a little bit anxiety-inducing or scary and people do kind of gravitate toward the fear of oh my gosh, what does this mean for me and my stability and security? And to your point, it’s about integration. It’s about how we allow ourselves to be humans and provide the value that humans provide while bringing technology along with us. And to your point, scheduling is really a great example. I mean, when managers are spending less time worrying about all the post-its that they have to get off their screen, it’s giving me a flashback to my days before AI  scheduling. 

Kevin: But it’s really true like that then they get to do the thing that they actually really enjoy. 

Traci: Yeah. And their managers in retail at the frontline are in those roles because what they enjoy is not in their office like they’re on the floor. It’s the people and those are those are the frontline workers whether they’re you know prospective managers or they’re you know hourly employees who just really enjoy the interaction. I mean, there’s so much value when you actually can  bring the harmony between employee demand and business needs, which really really is kind of applicable to probably any technology or any scenario, but obviously scheduling is arguably one of the better examples. And I’m curious, you know, especially considering your current role, you know, in consulting. I’m sure you work with a ton of companies on some of these things. Do you see any companies maybe avoiding any trends or even maybe with AI saying, you know what, we’re not we’re just not integrating because like it’s too much and how do you navigate that especially considering what you’ve just shared? 

Kevin: I think people are starting to come around but at first  for sure people were you know like we’re afraid of our trade secrets getting out or you know I don’t know they had seem to have all sorts of concerns about AI but you know you can’t do that uh the world is moving too quickly and you know you will get leapfrogged if you ignore these kind of things and here’s a stat about AI I heard that’s mind-blowing but you know for a long time computer processing power has been sort of dictated by Moore’s law which is that the computing power doubles every 18 months and if you do the math on that after 5 years that’s about a 12x improvement which is a lot right so in 5 years computing power is 12 times more powerful but AI is currently doubling every three months not 18 months and if you do the math on that after five years that is a 1 million X improvement. 1 million. So, you know, even if it slows down massively and it’s only 10% of that, you know, that it’s 100,000. It’s just not it’s just we’re the speed it’s going is mind-boggling. So, if you’re not in it   and if you’re not working with it, you will be disrupted. And that’s the other thing is because it takes out the tedious because it takes out the need to be a hardcore programmer, what have you, businesses can start with a lot less hurdles.  So you might have had 10 competitors in the past and in a year you might have a thousand. So you better get on board or you will be left behind. And so that’s kind of a message I deliver all the time loud and clear. If you want to be on the ship, you’ve got to get on the ship. Otherwise, you’re just going to watch a sail away. 

Traci: No, that’s really helpful to hear. And I’m shocked by that statistic. I’ve never heard that one actually yet. And now it’s something that I will talk about at dinner tonight. Because AI is always a topic. That’s really unbelievable. 

Kevin: Yeah. I got it from Casey Lobo at Deloitte just to give credit where it’s due.

Traci: Oh, well that’s extremely reliable data actually. 

Kevin: And you know it’s interesting because even if we put that into like a real life example because sometimes it’s hard to imagine what percentages or exponential growth feels and looks like even if we think about a year ago what AI generated images could do or like deep fakes right and what they can do now just a year maybe a year maybe even less time later. 

Traci: It is really unbelievable and mind-boggling and it’s actually quite exciting to be living during this time where you see such rapid technological growth here. 

Kevin: Let me give you a story. This is okay. So this house I’m living in we bought this house early at the beginning of   the year and it’s the oldest house we’ve ever lived in. It was built in 1955, and so we had a washing machine coming and they had said  you know where your water shut off valve is. We might need to shut off the water. I’m like, “Okay.” So, I went down the basement and I was like, “Oh my god, I don’t recognize anything in here. I don’t know.” And so I pull out Chat GPT and I put it in the video mode where I had the video camera and I said, “Can you help me find the water valve shut off valve?” And it guided me around the basement and to was like, “Go closer to that red handle over there.” I went over there and said, “That’s your water shut-off valve.”  So, that was mind-blowing. But then, you know, being a retail guy, I came up here to my office and I grabbed a shoe and I was like, “Okay.” I put the phone up to it with the video and I’m like,  “What can you tell me about this shoe? It was a Nike trail running shoe and it told me about the shoe, gave me some specs, talked about it, and then it said, “Are you going for a trail run?”And I said, “Yeah, but I– you know, it’s cold here. Will this keep my feet dry and warm?” And I said, “No, not that shoe, but here’s a different one.” And it started to tell me about a different shoe. 

Traci: Amazing. So it upsold you. 

Kevin: It upsold me. But that but then I was like okay like you know yes customers could come into stores with that so we should know about that but also what a great way to train employees in the   stores like now you can have this like dynamic training sort of thing. So that’s just another example where you could really take it you know.  

00:32:09.600 

Traci: Oh my gosh, I’m really inspired by that, actually. 

00:32:15.039

Kevin: That’s so I mean yeah like training is one of the hardest things to accomplish with employees and actually one of the things that you talked about in your tower experience is that you had all of this opportunity to like learn and grow and really you know have your career nurtured in that growth from like in-store employee to SVP and when I think about that like the the accessibility to really have information just at our fingertips like they’re really gone are the days where we don’t know the answer to something. And so when we – right – so when we think about merchandising or upselling or how to engage with a customer who’s maybe not really interested in hearing from the sales associate, but you have to overcome that challenge, like there is a huge benefit to having that technology readily accessible. 

Traci: That’s so fascinating.  

00:33:04.159 

Kevin: Yeah. Well, yeah. And you can use that to share with the customer directly, but also it’s a great way to train employees about customers you’re not used to talking to because you can role-play with it, right?

00:33:13.120 

Traci: Exactly. There are so many things you can do.  Exactly. You don’t have to call your parents and say, “Okay, like I, you know, I’m preparing for an interview.” You just, you know, call up your chatbot on your phone. You’re like, “Okay, I’m preparing for this interview for a sales associate or stock lead.” And it can go through everything. I mean, it’s really an undeniable resource for people. So, yeah, I hope your parents might be sad that you’re not going to call them.  

00:33:36.880

Kevin: That’s true. I’ll still call them. I’ll still call, I hope the listeners do, too. 

Traci: Call your parents. Say hello. They want to know. They want to hear from you. And when my kids are older, I’ll say, “Why aren’t you calling me?” Yeah. I’ll just call them. I’ll be exactly like my parents. 

Kevin: That’s what happens, right? 

00:33:53.600

Traci: But Kevin, this whole conversation has really been so phenomenal. And I shared with you that I do have two standard routine questions that I’m going to ask every single guest and you just happen to be the first one to go through them. So you have no idea what I’m going to ask. The first is what is the best advice that you’ve ever received and that you continue to live by. 

00:34:18.879

Kevin: Probably one that comes up a lot that I got from a old mentor was around negotiating. And I think he got this from someone else, too, but he said, ask for something that makes you uncomfortable.  So, it was, you know, that was his point. He’s like, you know, you want something, you got to set the bar and don’t set it to where you’re comfortable. Set it to where you’re uncomfortable. And that has been magical over the years.  

Traci: I can imagine.

Kevin: Yeah. And I mean, I’ve learned about it since then. I’m really into learning about behavioral economics, behavioral science, psychology, that kind of stuff. And there’s like a you know, there’s a thing called anchoring. And that’s essentially what it is. Like if you get first and you set the anchor, then the whole negotiation takes place around your anchor. So set it set it somewhere like that and you’re going to be in better shape. Right. Well, it’s, you know, it kind of comes back to like how you even value your own worth, right? Like people usually think when they think negotiations, they think salary. That’s where I was going. I was like, oh, that’s a very good piece of advice. And there generally is that feeling of, oh, if I ask too much, they’re just going to let me go. They’re just going to say nope. And the reality is something I tell people all the time too because I’m in HR and you know I have some little bit of credibility in this negotiate all at all times like all the time. 

Traci: And so to your point with the advice that you just shared that I like that it’s like okay you are going to feel uncomfortable probably at any point but more people more often than not are probably negotiating salaries that they feel more comfortable with. 

Kevin: They’re like oh yeah people aren’t going to cast me away if I ask for this. And then when you apply this advice that you apply, it’s like, okay, let me just let me just extend the line a little further. 

Traci That’s really, really, really helpful. Really interesting.  

00:36:10.640 

Kevin: Works really well. If you don’t do that, you’re actually negotiating with yourself before you throw it out there. So, don’t do that.  

Traci: Don’t do that. Negotiate with everybody else. That’s really, really interesting. And then the second question that I have for you here is where can people follow you or connect with you? because I’m sure that after listening to all of this wisdom and the insights and the experience that you have that people are going to be like I need to connect with  Kevin and learn more. 

00:36:40.800

Kevin: I would love for them to do that. My website is https://www.mistereadvisory.com/. I’m on LinkedIn. I just started on Substack. You know I’m trying to see what I can do there. So look me up there too would be great. And I am on Substack, I have a weekly newsletter too. So that comes out every week if you sign up for that. I throw some of these musings out there I call them like the one you talked about around followership.

Traci: And like I said I’ve been obsessively thinking about that musing that you that you shared around being really the best leaders being the best followers ultimately. Kevin, thank you so much again. I’m sure that anyone that connects with you is going to find even more value from what you’ve contributed here on the show. So, thank you again. Appreciate it. Thank you. 

Kevin: This was a lot of fun, Traci.