Transcript of Leadership Secrets: How to Build a $100M Company Culture | Brett K Oubre DSH #1011

It's not like the old days. Worked one job your whole life and got retirement money.

The reason that the fear worked in the '40s and the '50s and the '60s was because the lack of decent jobs in the state of the economy all the way to the '80s. If they got whacked, there was no other place to go. Now, there's millions of options. There's more jobs than there are people willing to take them.

All right, guys. Out here in Vegas with Brett, who has an event in town tomorrow.

Thanks for coming on, man. Thank you for inviting him.

Of course. Yeah, I saw your event with Michael Franzese tomorrow and John Maxwell, right?

Yeah, it's going to be Franzese and Maxwell and I.

And what was the purpose of this event?

We're going to call it... John is going to talk about his new book, High Road Leadership. Michael is going to talk about being a remade man. And I mean, he was a maid member in the Mafia, and he transition from that in '85 after he went to prison. Then mine is going to be remaking the man, if that makes sense, talking about... Of course, we're using that saying man, but we mean either gender. But in terms of remaking yourself, whether you're just getting started, whether you're in the middle and you got stagnant, or you're towards the end of your career and you want to get started again and make that legacy I got a bag for you, Chris.

Right. So the 12 Steps, that's the book you just released, right? It is. And that was about remaking yourself as a person?

Well, the 12 steps is when I got started, my dad was a minister. And not But that wasn't great. He had a lot of great values that he taught me as far as family values, as far as keeping your word and doing great things and work ethic and those type of things. But when it came to business acumen and some of the things that make you career successful outside of the religious community, he didn't have that. One of the things is a lot of people, the reason why history repeats themselves inside family because they say, Well, my dad did it like this, or my dad did it like this, or my mom did it like this, my mom did it like that. At the point, I remember when it happened, I realized that my parents don't have all the stuff, and that's okay because you meet other people that come alongside of you and make up for what your parents are not strong at, which doesn't make your parents negligible in those scenarios, it means it just helps you get further, faster. In my particular situation, I wrote this book, Twelve Steps, which is not I wake up in the morning at 5:00 AM, I go to the gym, I eat right.

It's not a book like that. We all know those things. I would get up, I would take off, I'd hit that wall, pull back. I would learn from the concept, from the mistake on my own with no guidance. And I said, if I can write this book about the concepts that you can apply to your own life, I could help people get further back.

I love that. And you've been through some stuff, my man. We got to get into this. Yeah, a few things, Quite a few things. Quite some traumatic incidents, right? There's been a few. So I know you have the paralysis, the health crisis, the plane crash. I don't even know where to start. Which one of those came first, I guess?

If you put it in that context, in 2012, I was getting ready to go to a college football game, and my son was sitting there and he said, Dad, would you watch Star Wars with me before before you leave. And I said, Sure, son. I had to move a table upstairs. And as I'm getting ready to go upstairs, this arm comes up, and I'm fighting with all my might to get it down. Then the next thing I knew or remember, I'm in an ambulance going to the hospital. Well, obviously, I had a seizure. They thought I had a stroke, but it was a seizure. Went to the hospital. They did a brain scan. The ER doc, which I don't think he was a bad person, but he didn't have all the information. He came back and says, You have metastatic brain cancer, and you got 6-10 months to live. Well, obviously, it's not that I'm not going to trust my doctors, but I'm going to do more research. I'm not going to go just based on one opinion. They kept me overnight at the hospital, had I have a couple of friends that knew a neurosurgeon in New Orleans.

Went to see him. He also trains all the residents for neurosurgery out of the LSU system and came out of one of the other major universities universities, and he's one of the best, probably top 5%. He did surgery on it. He came to him and he said, All right, well, let's do it Tuesday. I was like, Give me one more week. I said, Let's do it the Tuesday after. Went in, came out to surgery. I'm laying in the recovery room. He comes in. I woke up about seven minutes after surgery. When I wake up, they have that trake in your mouth, and I'm sitting there going, trying to say, Hey, this trick's in my mouth. The nurse goes, He's fighting us. They come in and they're trying to hold me down. The doctor comes walking through. He goes, He's not fighting you. He's awake Take the tube out of his mouth. They took the tube out of my mouth, and the doctor goes, I got some good news, and I got some bad news. I said, What's the good news? He goes, I think you got some time. I don't think is as bad as what the diagnosis was.

Although it is cancerous, I think it's a slower-growing cancer, and I think there's some things we can throw at it. He goes, The bad news is, try to move that arm. I couldn't. It was paralyzed. And he said, Well, when we do that, sometimes we cut some of the electrical connection that causes that to be able to move. We'll get you into physical therapy and see what you can do. And I said, well, you know what? I'm alive. That's great. I can cut the other arm off and I can go with just one arm. So to me, that's a lesson is, it doesn't matter what happens to you. It's how How do you react or respond to what happens to you?

Because you could have been so pissed.

You could have caused a scene. You know how many people lay in the bed and start going, Oh, I can't believe that happened to me. The world's being unfair. If we looked at it like that, the world's unfair to everybody. Even the people that you think are the most successful, you look at them, you got big homes, nice cars. They got these great memberships and everything and businesses. I promise you, there's plagues in their life. If you dived in and dug deep, that may be as bad or worse than what you're plagued with.

A hundred %.

Because money is not what buy us happens.

And that's what they try to teach.

That's what is trying to be taught. It's reaching your full potential by finding out what your true talents are and going to work and exercise that on a daily basis. We went on, and I got about probably a week later. He had told me when we initially went in before the consult, he said, We're going to do the surgery And probably next day you'll get out. He said, We'll wrap it up. You'll be fine. He said, Take it easy when you get home. And so he comes in the room that afternoon, that evening. He goes, Well, we're going to have to keep you 30 days. And I, Keep me 30 days for what? He goes, Well, you're having the problems with the arm. And I said, Man, I'm not staying 30 days. He goes, Well, you're going to need to go to physical therapy. I jumped up and take off walking down the hall. Because I was trying to show him that I can move, he came walking down the hall and goes, Hey, man, you convinced me. You convinced me. But he said, The fact that that's arms hanging like that, he said, You can mess up your shoulder and your rotator cup and everything else.

So the next day, I got out.

Wow. And you just did PT later on?

I started doing PT. I got home that day. I think it was a day later, day and a half. I went to the I was in the office the next day, and I think the day after that, I started PT.

That's crazy. You were still working right after.

I had the thing on my head.

Wow. So you were able to fix the paralysis, though, obviously.

Well, I strapped it up like this at first. You just I'll just do this. But I remember when I was doing it, first thing I did is I learned to tap my finger like that, and that's all I could do. And I just tapped, tapped, tapped, tapped, tapped. Like I said, again, not to praise me because there's people that have gone through more and accomplished more. But the point is that a lot of people would look at and go, I can barely tap my finger. And I went to bed that night, and I'm doing cart wheels in my head for being able to tap that finger.Beautiful.If that makes sense to me.

No, it does. Have you always had that positive mindset, or was that something you learned throughout your life?

I think I had a desire to be positive. But that's one of the things that's the thing in the book is talking about retraining your brain is I think when we're born, we're all born with this, I can do Everything is like, mommy, I want to be a fireman. Daddy, I want to be a lawyer. I want to be a policeman. And then over time, whatever causes that, no, you can't do this. No, don't do that. Some kid makes fun of you on the playground. You start feeling insecure about yourself as you realize that there's competition and that there's other people that can do things a little better than you. And that slowly lowers that self-esteem over time. And I think the first thing you got to do is fix that self-esteem. So that was a long way around to answer you, is I started out, and while I knew I had talent and I knew I had ability, I felt that low self-esteem because I was scared to fail and scared to get out there.

Yeah, I can relate to that. I feel like as children, there's something pure about it and positivity is there. And then throughout life, it gets drained or something. We start losing that creativity, almost.

That's part of the whole retraining in your mind is, one of the things I talk about is, go back to the last time you had success, And that may be as far as in a positive mindset to that seven-year-old mind. And think about what that seven-year-old mind had to experience to feel that way, and then start from there as to apply it into your adult life.

I love that. So the plane crash, that happened after this or before?

I'm getting my... The brain surgery was in '12, that was in '19. 17.

Got it. So seven years after that? Yeah. Wow. And what was the details of that incident?

Well, I wasn't supposed to fly with him that day. I was going to let the pilot go get her, and I was just going to stay home and wait for her to come back. But I was bored, didn't have anything to do. I called him up and I said, James, you mind if I ride with you? And he said, No, come on. I love the company. We fully down there, landed, went to eat with him, came back to the airport, did our normal stuff, did our pre-checks of the plane. We go to take off. As we're taking off, we're climbing through we get to 3,000 feet. And then all of a sudden, the plane stops accelerating, and the propeller stop, was still operating at this point, but you could see it slowing down. It would be like you and I being on the interstate. Then all of a sudden, I took my foot off the accelerator and you're going, Brett, why are you doing that? So I wasn't the pilot. I was just the passenger. I was flying it, which you can under a pilot supervision and the proper protocol, as you say, your flight controls.

So I handed the flight controls over to him. When I did, he turned back towards the airport, but he was coming down at 127 or 128 indicated airspeed. Best glide, which means how far you can glide that plane, is 88 knots.

Whoa. Okay. So he's going way over that.

He's going way over that, which means we're losing altitude at a much quicker rate to be able to make that airport. We should have been able to make that airport. And then he just freaked out and let go of everything. So I reach up, I grab it, I trim it out. Now, you got to realize from the time I'm talking about, this sounds like watching a play in sports on replay, but you see it in live. I mean, that's things like 10 seconds long. From the time this starts until the time that we hit the ground is less than three minutes. Holy crap. And so We're making that turn. I grab the thing, I trim it back to 88, and I'm watching the altitude, and I'm looking at it. And you're really the best place to pull that parachute, that particular particular plane is equipped with a parachute. It's supposed to be 3,000 feet, but I knew that a thousand feet, if you didn't pull it there, you don't really have any chance. At the same time, the girls are beating the seat and saying, Brett, and hollering and screaming and all lights and buzzing and beeping are going off.

And literally, I had two or three seconds to make the decision. I said to him because I remember he's supposed to be a pilot, In command, I said, Hey, do you want to pull the parachute? He hesitated. I pulled it. As soon as we pulled it, you stop in mid-flight, you go straight up to the air, and you're coming down, nose down. Whoa. We come down, nose down, and we come down, nose down. When you get to about 200 feet, the levelers pop, and it does this, and then it lands on the ground. When it lands on the ground, I immediately knew that a plane can explode that quick whenever you hit the ground because of a spark fire from the fuel. This particular plane had doors that opened up like that. I opened the doors and I told the girls, I said, You all go ahead of us and I'll come behind you. Well, they didn't say, No, we want you to go first. Not that they would, but they didn't say, No, you come with us. As soon as I said that, Lily hit the back of my head, Heather hit the back of James' head, and they were gone.

I got out of the plane. They had went the opposite way. They went out towards the one little wooded area, and it was full of thorns. They were wearing those jeans shorts that ladies like to wear that are fashionable. They're going the opposite way. I see the firemen coming through, so I go catch them, and they're freaked out. I said, Hey, come on, let's go this way. We go this way, and we get towards the ambulance. I looked got them, and they were going, Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God. I said, Hey, settle down. I said, The majority of people that go through what we just went through died. We're You're not lucky. You got to figure out what your purpose is and why we're still here. And the other part that I think is a lesson is most of life's moments is preparing, training, doing what you're doing right now. You didn't walk in here and throw everything on the table in relates to the daily activity. It may be starting the business. You might have said, Hey, but from once you get the training, you've got just a few short time to make a decision to either go this way or go that way.

That is a crazy story. Because it sounds like the pilot in command just shut down and you were just reacting.

He's not a bad guy. He froze. That's the point with the training yourself and preparing your sofa the moment. You can't freeze, and most people do what?

They run away from their problem. They freeze. No matter what it is.

They have a financial problem, they freeze. They go the opposite way and ignore it thinking it's going to go away. It's not going to go away. And you ignore it, then you're creating yourself, or you'll hear people, they go drinking and doing drugs or gambling or whatever it is. I have employees that have gone through those problems, and I sit down with them and say, Hey, if you do all this thing and you're ignoring all these other personal problems, at some point, this stuff is going to clear up. But when it clears up, now you're going to have two problems instead of one. Right.

Yeah. I used to run away from problems to ignore problems. My style was to walk away from arguments, but that doesn't work long term.

No. And you don't really have to argue. You just put down your points and try to have an intelligible discussion. Yeah.

Which is hard these days.

It's certainly with the division in politics and business and everybody's so far off. I don't think it has to be that way, regardless of what your views and opinions.

That's why I like business, though, because it's more of an even playing field. Pretty much. So I'm a fan of just capitalism, entrepreneurship. I don't care what you look like. Just do some business.

I don't care what you do, who you are, as long as it's ethical, legal, and moral, and we can put revenue on the books, let's roll.

Absolutely.

That being said, when you have somebody that's working for you, you give them every effort to succeed before you just got them. And you do that for one reason. Number one, it's the right thing to do with the employee. You need to make sure you put them in a spot where they have the skill set. If they don't have the skill set, you give them the skill set, the talent set. If they don't have the talent, you look for some other areas in your organization that may help them. Now, when I've had a bad attitude, I've never been able to change somebody's attitude. But the fourth thing is that when you get to the point and you come in and you cut somebody ahead of time, everybody in that organization is looking there and going, Well, he did that to him or her. He's not about that to do that to me. And all of a sudden, you create this divisionary culture. And what you want your culture to do is you want them to get to the point where they've watched all the steps you've taken, and they go, he finally got rid of her.

Got it. If that makes sense. Yeah. So when you hear that quote, Hire quick, but fire quicker, you're not a fan of that, then? No. Because that's what's being taught for these people?

I'm not a fan of it because culture is the only... Everybody's in this podcast world. Everybody can buy the equipment. Everybody can go and get on to different platforms and do those things. But let's say you had a team around you, and I don't know what your team is, but your team around you, and you treat them in the way that allows them to take down their certain, and they know that they're their wall, and they know that they can operate here, and they can let their creativity flow. And then when they have issues, they know you're going to sit down with them, help them overcome their issues, And like I said, if it's a talent set and you got something else in your organization that can work for them, not only does that help them, it helps all the people around them because they look at them and go, Man, he generally cares about people and their opportunities your energy to succeed.

Absolutely. Yeah. The traditional work environment is to rule by fear, right? To be scared of your boss.

That's 1940s, 1950s stuff, and it didn't work. Your generation, it doesn't work for them. If you come in and start doing that in your generation, you walk in, there won't be a soul in it.

Yeah. We're pretty quick to just find a new job. It's not like the old days, where you worked one job your whole life got retirement money. I think I've seen some stats saying we're getting a new job every year or two, something crazy like that.

Well, I think we've been successful holding on to the younger folks, but it's because some of the things that I shared with you. But the reason that the fear worked in the '40s and the '50s and the '60s was because the lack of decent jobs in the state of the economy all the to the '80s. And so people would get that job, and they would take whatever abuse that it took because they wanted to hang on to that. They wanted to hang on to their benefits. They wanted to hang on their insurance because if they got whacked, there was no other place to go.

No fallback option.

Now, there's millions of options. There's more jobs than there are people willing to take.

Yeah. You go on LinkedIn these days, Indeed, wherever, Craigslist, you could find a job in a A day.100 percent.Easily.100 %. Yeah, we got a lot of options. But at the same time, I don't want to be bouncing jobs. I want to be at the same company or doing the same thing.

I think you can still have that loyalty with the younger folks, but you got to create that loyalty. And when you have that situation where you're not providing that culture in an area where they can let their wall down and grow and let them know that you truly care about their success. And it's more important with your generation because you do feel like I can go wherever I want to.

It does, yes. You're making the younger guys feel comfortable, feel like a safe environment. A hundred %. And you're getting involved with their personal lives a little bit, too.

A hundred %. I don't get involved in far as unless they ask me specifically, but I get to know them. I get to know who their wives or husbands are. I get to know who their kids are, where they go to school, what they What do they like to do. Are they having an issue today? Because when you walk around your company, your culture is almost like leading a music orchestra. You're going up here, a little bit down over here, and then they do too far down, all right, bring it back up. And if you don't do that every day, your culture gets out of control before you even realize it took a turn.

That's impressive that you're doing that because you have a $100 million company So the fact that you're knowing about their lives is hats off to you, man.

Well, the same thing. We've got leaders. I don't want to lead anybody to believe that I'm doing everything because there's no such thing. Anybody who says that is not being truthful or honest. But what we've done is equip our leaders in their individual areas of influence to do the exact same thing. And then I go around on a regular basis and enforce those things from knowing that I care about them as people.

When you look back on the growth, was it a few key decisions, or was it more of a gradual growth for this company?

For this company, it's a sum total of a lifetime of failures. And I think you probably heard that before, but I didn't make the decision to do what I was doing until I had all these ideas that I wanted to do, and I had all these things. I broke down that I used to carry a wallet. I had it down in my wallet that I wanted to write a book, that I wanted to have 66 dealerships that I wanted to be a motivational speaker. But it kept being, well, I'll do that next month. I'll do that next quarter. I'll do that quarter after. I kept kicking the ball down the road until Until doctor comes in and says you have a brain tumor. Then all of a sudden, the shortening of time becomes a reality. That's what it's hard for people to understand. The hardest thing to do is to experience every lesson yourself. You hear so many people say, Well, I can't learn anything. I got to learn it myself. If you got to learn it yourself, you'll never get as far as you want to go. I would rather take some people that are trustworthy, that have experienced some things, and take their lessons that they've already learned and apply.

I'm still going to learn minds anyway. There's still going to be failures. There's going to be certain things that I say, well, I've listened to this person, and I've listened to this person, and that's two alternative views. I'll take four or five of this one and four or five of that. But the point I'm not having to learn every lesson myself. By failure, I can pull from some other people's failure, which is what I meant while ago when I said get further, fast.

Because now you could save time on... Because people failed for years, but you could learn that quick and implement it right away.

You could tell us, as young of a guy as you are, you could take other people's failures and bypass that, like you're going on the interstate. You could get off on a bypass and skip all this other road and get where they're at.

You want a guy.

Get there quicker.

Yeah. I just learned this about Bezos. So whenever he enters a new industry, he'll poach the top guys of his competitors in that industry because he wants to learn about all their failures and save time. It's brilliant. Right? Right. Yeah. So I think just failure in general, we should reframe the mindset around it. People are scared of it, but you should be honestly excited about it.

Failure is an opportunity to... The only way failure is failure if you are unwilling to see the lesson in it. And I think there's more people that are unwilling to see the lesson than are willing to see the lesson. Most people People, they jump out and see that's what I was talking about, is going back to that time in your mind when you didn't see that failure, you didn't see those as not possibilities. You go back in your mind and you retrain that brain. Because the majority of people, when they get to that point, they're not going to try anything. That's where the self-esteem comes in, because they're afraid if they try something, the scenario that they've already ran in their mind is going to become true. But guess what? Whatever you think about is what becomes reality. And so it already going to come true unless you retrain that brain.

Yeah. Self-esteem and ego. They destroy a lot of business, a lot of relationships.

You should stand in the crowd and pump your people instead of pumping yourself.

Brett, it's been awesome, man. Anything else you want to close off with? We'll link the book in the video.

You can get this on Amazon. We have the audiobook on there as well. Of course, we're on Audible, Apple platform, and all the platforms that are major that you can see, because I know there's more folks that are doing the downloads now than the physical book. You can get it on all of our LinkedIn. You can get it on Instagram. You can get it on TikTok, and you can follow us all there for fresh daily content.

Perfect. We'll link it below. Thanks for coming on, bro. All right. Appreciate you. Thanks for watching, guys. Thank you. Thank you for watching. That's a lot. Peace.

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