Speaker 1: 0:11

and welcome back to where leaders connect, the corporate connections podcast, where we sit down with business owners and entrepreneurs from across our canadian network and talk to them about business, about their journey, about the things that get them excited today, tomorrow and, I don't know, even yesterday. My name is Trevor Botkin, I am the National Director for Corporate Connections Canada and it is my incredible pleasure today to have Toronto 2 member and good friend, laurel Carr, on the podcast. Passionate about her clients, working in their natural style to achieve powerful results with ease. Laurel takes pride in working with exceptional and acknowledged peak performers achieving success at the top of their industries. She's an expert in helping you find more clients, shorten your sales cycle and build an A-team to generate more revenue. She's an award-winning marketer, certified coach and Colby certified consultant who wants business leaders and their teams to excel. Welcome to the podcast, ms Laurel Carr. Hey, laurel.

Speaker 2: 1:14

It's a pleasure to be here, Trevor.

Speaker 1: 1:17

It's been too long. We should have had you on in season one, but I'm happy to have you in season two, so it's good to see you All.

Speaker 2: 1:24

Good, everything works out.

Speaker 1: 1:27

In your signature red as always yeah. So, if you're listening to the podcast, what you're missing is this incredible red jacket that Laurel's wearing, which is, I would say, one of the things that you're probably most known for, other than your attitude and brilliance, is that you always show up wearing a flash of red.

Speaker 2: 1:49

I do love red and I have always loved red, and even as a kid, when my my, my mother would say you're going to get tired of red and I haven't yet. So I, uh, I, I take it. I take it on part of my brand. I take it on part of my brand.

Speaker 1: 2:04

So even as a kid, you were enamored with the color.

Speaker 1: 2:08

Yes, I loved how I felt when I wore red. That's beautiful. It's funny. I was in a forum meeting yesterday and the icebreaker question was what did you want to be as a kid and what changed or what stopped you from living out that dream? So I'm going to start there today, since you brought up loving Red as a child. And this is not. This isn't planned, unfortunately. This is how my brain works. What did you always want to be when you were a young woman or a young girl?

Speaker 2: 2:44

I think I passed through a few different, you know, phases of, you know, wanting to be a vet, you know, and help animals when I was really young. But I knew that when I was in high school that I wanted to do something creative. And I remember the day that 17 magazine came out and I picked it up and I flipped through and I saw this article about someone who created designs for fabrics and fashion. And that was it. It's like, okay, that's what I'm going to do. I am going to design, you know, textiles.

Speaker 2: 3:24

Of course my parents thought, well, that's not something you're going to learn at university and you're going to university. So I scratched my head and I said, okay, what can I do at university that would get me closer to my goal? So I took a Bachelor of Fine Art double in art history, which exposed me to all kinds of creativity, all kinds of great artists, and I still knew that I wanted to be more purposeful with my creativity. So I knew that I would apply it in some way. And so when I graduated from university, I looked at how can I apply creativity in the workforce? And that was way before I knew anything about Colby or my Colby, which proved that, yes, I have always been an innovator, a creator, and I like to be purposeful when I'm creating.

Speaker 1: 4:28

Beautiful. So we're going to. I think I think that segues nicely, since you're bringing up Colby, and I don't think everyone understands what Colby is. They may be more familiar with with whether it's disc profiles or 21 personalities or that. And again, when I first met you, I don't think I had heard of of Colby other than other than the beef.

Speaker 2: 4:53

This is. This is Colby, not the beef, Not related in any way.

Speaker 1: 4:57

So maybe if you could just unpack for our listeners what the Colby personality is or how that relates to an individual, and then that may segue into how you use it, not only as a certified Colby consultant, but also how you help business leaders in terms of their own or understanding their own leadership style within the Colby index, but how they can leverage that when you start looking at their business from a strategic standpoint.

Speaker 2: 5:29

Yeah, beautiful. First of all, obviously, colby beef has done a much better job of their getting their brand out there. So I sometimes joke as a marketer that the best thing about Colby is no one's heard of it, and so they're always curious what is it? And the worst thing about Colby is that nobody's heard of it, and so they're always curious what is it? And the worst thing about Colby is that nobody's heard of it. So, but indeed the Colby assessment is the only scientifically proven assessment for understanding how we actually get things done, how we do things, how we make decisions, how we show up with our you know, our zone of genius, how we are, how, what makes us have unique abilities. And it's often misunderstood as another personality assessment, like DISC or Myers-Briggs Personality assessments look at things like your values, your motivations.

Speaker 2: 6:28

These are important things because there's actually three parts of the mind that come into all the decisions that we make, all of the things that we do. But in addition to the personality side, or what we call affective part of the mind, we have the cognitive, so all your skills and experience, et cetera. And the third part that most people don't know about is what the Colby assessment actually assesses, which is called the conative part of the mind, and that is a word that actually Kathy Colby, who created the Colby Assessment back in 1974, so it has been around for a while she discovered it had been created by Aristotle and Plato during the time of the Greek philosophers and had sort of been lost in our lexicon. So she has brought it back and by understanding how we actually do things, we can be more productive and efficient because we can lean into the way that we naturally get things done. When you're part of a team, you want to have as many different what we call problem-solving methods around you, and this is how business owners and leaders can get more from their team, because they can let people work in their zone of genius. So, for example, trevor, I happen to know their zone of genius. So, for example, you know, trevor, I happen to know your zone of genius is also in innovation, but also in implementation. That's okay for me to share Mine. We share that. We share the similarity in a similarity in that we like to innovate and brainstorm ideas.

Speaker 2: 8:27

Other people are stabilizers and we need all. You know. We need innovators and we need stabilizers. You know we need those people that say it's not broken. Why are we fixing it? Because people like you and I would just see what would happen if we broke it, which is how new things get created, let's say. But there are four different ways that each of us solve problems, get things done that are natural to us. It doesn't mean we can't do things in any which way. We need to to get things done. Sometimes it's messy and we have to get it done. We get it done. It just means that it will take less energy, it will be easier and it will be faster if we do things in the mode and the modes that come most natural to us and then surround ourselves by people who do things in other ways, so that we have greater diversity of problem solving around the table.

Speaker 1: 9:29

And I assume when you're working with a company or when you have a specific client or the owner or business leader of that company and you're able to understand how they get things done, you're able to tailor also a bit of your strategy and how you look at their business so that you're not kind of falling into, I would say, their camouflaged hole or their pitfalls of asking them to do something that's just really not their strength but also saying this may be a blind spot that they have and so if I walk down this, I'm only going to set myself up to fail as the consultant.

Speaker 1: 10:07

But if we tailor this strategy for where they're strong, then A we're going to have a better result, they're going to be happier with the result, or we can start identifying where maybe they're missing a piece on their team, where a typical marketing strategy may need that person Again, it's not personality where a specific strategy may need that cognitive type who can get stuff done. Maybe it doesn't need to be perfect, it needs to be quick and dirty to get it out there, because that's that's what the business needs.

Speaker 2: 10:41

Absolutely so. One of the one of the things that we are able to do is free people from any kind of thought that they have to do it in a certain way Right. First of all, we've all grown up with with, you know, parents and or people around us telling us the best way to do things, and the wonderful thing about Colby is it frees you from any kind of cookie cutter solution. We all do things the way we naturally do things, and for anybody out there who has kids or no kids, you know what. They are not designed to solve problems the way their parents solve problems. They naturally have their own way of doing things and we need to encourage that and let them do things in their own way, because that is their superpower and that will one day be their big differentiator. In the case of a business leader. They hit a ceiling of complexity, right. They do things the way they think they need to be done and then, when they're ready to scale or shift or go to the next level, they can't keep doing it that way.

Speaker 2: 11:54

I mean this happened to me. I did my Colby in 1998. I had a two-year-old and I wondered why I couldn't work 16 hours a day anymore. And you know it's just like, okay, I've got to scale, I've got to bring people in. How do I know who the right people are to bring in and what are the tasks to give them? And it was so much easier by knowing my Colby, what I needed to bring to surround me to be able to focus on my zone of genius helping clients and have other people take care of the things that, yes, I could do them. I was doing them, but I was taking way longer than somebody who loves to do what that is.

Speaker 1: 12:35

Whatever that is For me, probably it was a mix up, a cheat on the team or surrounding yourself by people who then filled in these blanks within your own sort of things that weren't your superpower. Were you actively going out and looking? Okay, I don't like Excel spreadsheets. I need that kind of process part of my business. I need to find somebody who loves spreadsheets. Were you looking at it from that standpoint? Were you doing Colby assessments on prospects before they, you know, as part of their application process? Like, how are you looking at when you built your own business?

Speaker 2: 13:24

Great question. So I always say to my clients who are looking to recruit first find someone who's the right fit for the team that's going to come from their. You know they don't necessarily need to do a personality assessment, but those are the kinds of things that you would might learn from a personality assessment and you want to make sure they also have the right skills and education or are capable of learning more. I always say, in terms of cognitive right, you can always get more education, more skills, more knowledge and more experience right and with um personality or the effective part of the mind, it depends on your situation, how you're going to show up. So like like thing that I love about Colby is it never changes. It is how you have, you know how, how the brain has wired.

Speaker 2: 14:22

Yeah, it's exactly. I mean it's. It's because the brain is a very efficient organ that's figured out the best, fastest way to do things to get what we need as human beings. It's an amazing. It's an amazing organ, right? So? And then we carried that through.

Speaker 2: 14:39

So what I do is I always suggest and that's what I did I always suggest, you know, pare down your candidates Maybe you've got two and you can't decide which one and then use the Colby assessment to figure out which one is going to fit better on the team and let them know why they fit better on the team. Let them know why they are you know you're inviting them onto the team, because what I often see is you know, because I, when, when my clients bring somebody in and they haven't done the Colby first, and then we do the Colby, and I say I asked that person or let that new candidate know oh, here, this is your superpower, this is what the team needs from you, and they were like oh, I thought I had to do everything the way they did things. Right, that's, it's such a common, you know, because we want to fit in and all of that. But when people are empowered to know how they can actually make a big difference. That is truly the way to create a collaborative team. So I always look for the right fit. So always look for the right fit, and Colby has some excellent tools for because what you're familiar with, trevor, and what most people do is a Colby A, which is an individual Colby assessment, which I was with.

Speaker 2: 16:10

If I'm doing something and I want to give that, pass that off to someone else, what do I think they need? What kind of Colby profile do I think they need? If I'm hiring for a new position and nobody's been doing it, there's a Colby C and that's for someone who's going to be leading that person, who doesn't do that job currently and they would look at okay, these are the attributes that I think this position needs. And then we line them up right. So you've got, maybe, candidates who've done their Colby A and you've got Colby B, which shows how the person who's currently in that role is doing it, and yet you know they're burning out or they're not the right fit or they're really better, their talents are better used somewhere else. And then you've got the Colby C of the person overseeing, because maybe the person overseeing has a bigger plan right, like, ok, we want this person out of someplace else in five years from now. We want to make sure that they're the right person. So there's different levels, um, but it all starts with the colby a.

Speaker 1: 17:19

We all need to understand ourselves first I assume from a, from a management standpoint or or a team standpoint, you would want a mix of different colby profiles so that you 100 of cover all your bases, but just knowing that, how everyone accomplishes things differently. Yeah, right, yeah.

Speaker 2: 17:40

So there's 12 different ways right that people can solve problems and each of us excels in four. So when you bring a team together, you really want to cover um, you really want to have people in all of those zones.

Speaker 1: 17:56

Wow.

Speaker 2: 17:58

Yeah, and it's fairly powerful.

Speaker 1: 18:00

I don't think I get all four in terms of problem solving. I think it's about one, maybe two. Usually it's the hammer. Get the hammer and just smash until it fits, mash until it fits. So, and I'm curious and I appreciate that and hopefully I mean anyone that's interested obviously, can reach out or follow up or read more about the Colby which is K-O-L-B-E. We'll put it, we'll put in the show notes.

Speaker 2: 18:24

Yeah, for those who are interested, named after Kathy Colby, who created it and is still involved and is still involved, and every year we have a professional development conference where she speaks and she's a theorist and she continues to develop Colby theory.

Speaker 1: 18:45

So which I'm passionate about. If that isn't obvious, I think it's clear. I think it's clear, so let's, let's jump over to, because I think that's a really interesting aspect of leadership is to um, because I think that's a really interesting aspect of leadership is, and obviously it's a tool that you have been using since the late nineties in terms of not only, I think, kind of holding up a mirror to someone and saying you know, this is how you get things done and if, and if you've been, you know, feeling bad that you're not getting things done, it's because that's not your strength. Like, literally, there's no way you would ever be that way You're you're not getting things done. It's because that's not your strength. Like, literally, there's no way you would ever be that way. You're asking a tortoise to fly. It doesn't work, absolutely. I think that's really interesting. How do you go about aside from Colby, how do you go about helping your clients adapt the correct strategies for growth that's tailored for them adapt?

Speaker 2: 19:33

the correct strategies for growth that's tailored for them. Oh, I love that Big question. But, yes, colby is. You know, colby is number one because you want to be able to leverage the strengths you already have. And then, second to that is what's your? You know what's your intention, what's your big goal.

Speaker 2: 19:55

And a lot of my clients are coming to me because they've been trying to get to their goal for the last, you know, year, two years, three years, and they're frustrated, and their whole team's frustrated, because they're not making any progress and, um, you know, like you mentioned, because probably they had a hammer, so that's what they were using. And so when I am, when they bring me in to help them break through that um, uh, frustration, usually um and and um be able to assess, like, how everybody on the team contributes. Then we have a very specific program we call it the for private clients, where that's a whole team, that we call it the impact formula and if and we also have a group program for smaller businesses called the Smart and Savvy Strategy School. We go through six different aspects of their business to drill down, to find out what is, you know, based on their goal, based on their individual. You know the strengths of the team and the team leader and how they wish to lead. How can we turn that into a value proposition and attract more clients like their best clients? Because they already know they have great clients and they want to know how to replicate them.

Speaker 2: 21:15

And I always say you know, you can take any clients that come your way organically, but if you're going to spend time, money, energy, let's go after your best clients, and what happens is that elevates the whole business, because now they're, you know, focused on bringing in clients that really resonate for them, who really get them, and what they're getting is their Colby right.

Speaker 2: 21:42

What those clients need is what our clients do, naturally. So while I work with a lot of investment advisory teams or financial services teams, they essentially sell something similar, but they all sell it and do it and support their clients and add value to their clients differently, and that's what I love. And when they refer me to other teams in their same branch, they don't have any concern about having someone else work with me because they know that that team will not be going after the same client and it just makes their whole marketing strategy so much more focused and simple, and that's what I love. I love to truly differentiate people and help them step into who they already are, but own it and let that be how they stand out and how they show up.

Speaker 1: 22:46

Well, it also sounds like you really find that which makes them authentically themselves and and then not like you know double down on that. You need to not be shy about it, but say this is who you are, this is, this is how you show up Like, this is what we embrace, Not you know, not what you think you need to be to be in the market, but what you truly are, which then it's a trickle down effect. Because if, if you and I remember when I was doing branding and you'd go into a company, you'd ask the CEO what that brand is of that company and they'd give you one answer, but if you ask 10 employees, you'd have 10 other answers, which is usually the misalignment. So it sounds like you're able to tap into that intuitively from them and then help everyone kind of embrace that ideology or that vision of what they could be.

Speaker 2: 23:35

And sometimes they've never spoken about it together. So because I'm coming in facilitating those business owners business leaders have been, have had to facilitate. They don't get to speak at the on the same level with everyone else and contribute and listen to what everyone else is saying and put their thoughts out there. That's what I often hear and they don't know. I don't know that, they don't know how, but they haven't been effective in having those conversations with their team. So it allows them to be part of the team and all of the team members are sharing and I absolutely say that every one of you has a different perspective on each, on your clients, because you all speak to them about different things.

Speaker 2: 24:29

So let's bring it all together. Let's understand. You know who's your best client, why are they your best client? And sometimes I've had people say I thought this was our, our best client, but actually they're the most irritating client and they bring that, they drag the whole team down. And I'm not saying you're going to dump your clients, I'm just saying that sometimes you also see that someone who is a difficult client is actually the person that's delivering you the opportunity to do something more complex and then be able to brag about it and say we can do this for you because we did it for someone else.

Speaker 1: 25:07

But it's also it depends who you ask, right. So if you ask you know if you're in a large enough business where there's a there's sales and there's, and then there's obviously operations or the delivery side of those sales, and then you've got the invoicing or receivables and they all will have a very different relationship with that client. And so the salesperson may be like this is our best client. I generate a ton of sales and the delivery people are going yes, but it kills us, like it kills us to deliver that sale. It's difficult and receivables like it's 90 to 120 days for us to receive that. It's a big like we go in debt to deliver that. And then you know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 25:50

And and then other you know other people say well, that sales is really tough and it's like but it's our dream client, we love delivering. So you know what I mean. I think it's. It's it's also to be able to create that cross chat between the departments and the whole team to understand what may look good at the top, at the bottom is just painful, just utterly painful. 100%. Or vice versa, yeah, where someone say it's a small client, we don't get a lot of our revenue from them, and they go yeah, but it's just joy. It's just joy working with that client.

Speaker 2: 26:24

And those clients that are happy are the ones that are out there being your best ambassador.

Speaker 1: 26:29

Of course Right.

Speaker 2: 26:30

Telling other people. So I always say it's not your largest check that determines who your best client is. It's the person who sends you referrals. It's the person who invites you to a golf tournament where there are more people like them. It's those kinds of opportunities.

Speaker 1: 26:49

And they're also the ones, I think, who validate your choices of who you want to be Right and I experienced that within corporate connections because you know, sometimes you know the members who may not have the biggest businesses may not be the ones that I would say you know are the you, because this relationship or this opportunity or my forum experiences changed my life, or I was able to handle a health emergency in my family through a relationship, and those are the validating ones where you go, it's not because we took a $100 million business to $150 million business. It's because we took a human being and were able to help something that was a critical issue in their life or in their business and they were able to associate that with our community and I'm like that's validating and I think every business owner.

Speaker 2: 27:54

That resonates at some at some point I mean this is yeah, I mean it's a you know at the at at the heart. I. I mean this is yeah, I mean it's a you know at the at at the heart. I love to work. Well, I love to work with people who are working from their, their heart, not just transactional right. So people who have a passion for what they do and what they can do and really invest in delivering that to their, to their clients.

Speaker 1: 28:24

So, on that point and we've talked about best clients and I'm going to put you on the spot because we're almost out of time, but I want to put you on the spot and say who talked about best but I want to say who's your, who's your dream client? Who's the client? And it may not be a company, it may not be a specific name, but what's who's your dream client? Who's the client? And it may not be a company, it may not be a specific name, but what's? What's the mandate that you and your team would just love to sink your creative genius into, knowing that either it's a great brand that maybe is just missing the mark, or it's, it's a company that you think you would have so much fun working with their team to to bring them to the next level as a business.

Speaker 2: 29:06

Oh, what a juicy question, trevor. Um, I definitely have a best client. I would not be out there advocating that other people identify their best client if they didn't have a best client. And, um, I have to say, I feel so grateful for this client who not only values everything that we deliver, tells me, you know, on a regular basis. Um, yeah, I just saved that for our conversation with laurel. They have like a regular meeting with me, nice, one of them on the. So this team of five just became six and they really were able to do so much as a team of five because of how they used their, all of their.

Speaker 1: 29:54

Superpowers.

Speaker 2: 29:56

Yeah, yeah. The way that they naturally operate, so they, you know they're the. The way that they naturally operate, so they, you know they're efficient, they're. They love what they do, they love coming in. But I have to tell you, one of them just summited mount everest oh, wow and they literally, you know, made my day by.

Speaker 2: 30:19

I couldn't have done this without the coaching that you've delivered to our team. And on top of that, I found out that they asked one of the team members to send my communication strategy to them because they needed to have a difficult conversation on the mountain.

Speaker 1: 30:37

On the mountain.

Speaker 2: 30:38

I on the mountain, wow, and that's what gives me satisfaction somebody who's willing to take because how we do one thing is how we do everything to take what they take from their work and put, bring that into the rest of their life.

Speaker 1: 30:58

I just want to highlight that how we do one thing is how we do everything.

Speaker 2: 31:03

Yes, and that's what Colby is all about. Right, that's why Colby is so key to understanding your leadership style, to understanding your unique value proposition, to understanding how to build a team that is going to be able to understand what you need and and deliver what you need and how you need it, and it doesn't change. So it's how you do things in your personal life and in your professional life. So you know, whatever what. How we do, one thing is how we do everything that that's beautiful as well.

Speaker 1: 31:40

Look, if you're listening to this and you're out there and you want to Mount uh, if you want to uh climb, or if you want to reach the summit, if you want to summit, uh, the real Mount Everest, or your own personal uh or professional Mount Everest, I would encourage you to go to wwwimpaginationinccom. So I-M-P-A-G-I-N-A-T-I-O-N-I-N-Ccom. We'll also put that in the liner notes so you don't have to try to copy it down while you're driving or listening to this. But impaginationinccom, obviously she's very active on linkedin and you can look at for laurel car with two r's, c-a-r-r and laurel spelled with an a that's correct, not an e-l-l-a-u-r-a-l laurel.

Speaker 1: 32:36

thank you so much, and not just for being on the podcast, but thank you for everything that you continue to do within the community as a leader in your chapter, and I really do appreciate you and everything you've done so far and continue to do in the future.

Speaker 2: 32:54

Thank you so much, Trevor. I have really enjoyed being you know that saying you are the sum total of the five people you surround yourself with Well, corporate connections wraps their arms around you from across the globe and right down to the chapter level, and it has really been my pleasure to be part of corporate connections and to have this conversation with you.

Speaker 1: 33:16

Well, thank you, laurel, a true leader in every sense of the word, and I look forward to spending more time with you.

Speaker 1: 33:23

And so, as we wrap up today's episode, I just want to loop back to something that you said, laurel, and I'm going to quote you how you do one thing is how you do everything, and I think it's just a great reminder to approach every task, every interaction, with intention and excellence, and hopefully, I think it just really reflects who we want to be as leaders and individuals.

Speaker 1: 33:50

And to the rest of the Corporate Connections Canada community and, I guess, members around the world, I really just want to say thank you, and in your engagement, your support, your commitment to growth and riches, not only this podcast but, I think, our entire community, and I think that together we continue to elevate each other, forging relationships that really transcend boundaries and, you know, for me at least, inspires greatness To everyone listening today or whenever you're listening to this. I guess. Join us again next time as we delve deeper into, for me at least, inspires greatness To everyone listening today or whenever you're listening to this. I guess. Join us again next time as we delve deeper into the realms of leadership, innovation and the human experience. And until then, keep connecting, keep leading and keep striving for excellence. And, as always, this is when leaders connect.