AI Edits from Evan's Leadership Journey
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Speaker 4: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone. Welcome to the refined network podcast. I'm Christopher. This is Evan for any of you, you that are new here. Hi. And for those of you that have been here before, welcome. ~Yeah, ~today~ we're, we're going to talk about how Evan and I are really, really great with recording and audio and all the things.~
~No, just kidding. ~We're going to talk to you ~today ~about how we've transcended our leadership styles throughout our journey. Reason I want to jump in on this is ~as, as we've, ~as we've got, you know, the refined network off the ground, and now we have some viable products in some of the things that we're choosing to do are being, ~you know, ~acknowledged with value.
And now we have actual clients, customers, and people that are following. I want to say thank you for that. But also as our journey as leaders, I want to talk about how we got to where we're at. And then I also want to cast a little bit of a vision forward. So to jump right into it Evan, within, ~within your, ~your experience and your leadership journey, walk me through the beginning.
Speaker 5: So the beginning starts with the guy that's been on the podcast, Kevin Smith. He's the one that sat me down and said, Evan, you've got leadership potential. And I've told the story many [00:01:00] times in my head, I'm like, what's he talking about? Like, I don't, I don't understand. And what he did was, he was very careful in how he did this and very sneaky in his leadership.
So let me paint a picture. We're working at a church and we have 14 campuses. So we, the furthest campus was like four hours away and it's all in South Carolina. And the ones that were on the coast, the three, four hours, they didn't get as much love as the ones up here when it came to. People showing up and, you know, on a Sunday to be like, Hey, how can we help?
Kevin comes to me, he says, Hey, go to Columbia, which is about an hour and a half away, take the production guy out to lunch on a Monday and see if there's anything that he needs from us or anything we can do to serve him. ~I can't remember all the details, something he needed. And ~so I came back and I was like, Hey, this is what he needed.
And he was like, all right, well, go ahead and order that for him. So I ordered it [00:02:00] for him. Well, when I did that, I just bought equity because now how the church was structured here, I am coming in to serve him. Hey, what do you need? And so the next week he'd be like, Hey, can you go to Charleston? Do the same thing.
I go to Charleston. Then he's like, Hey, can you go to a Myrtle beach? Shout out dirty Myrtle Myrtle beach on a Sunday. I want you to go on a Sunday. I want you to see how they're. Their production is, I want you to see like, you know, what we're looking for. Cause we wanted everything to be unified. Like, you know, going to a Chick fil A, it's the same, same setup the same everybody's, you know, same, my pleasure.
And so we wanted that for production, obviously there's buildings and limitations, right? ~You know, I'm like, Ooh, that transition wasn't great.~ you know, they, they need video help there. Like it's all volunteer based. So we might schedule a training for videos and we go down there and say, Hey, I noticed your video.
Like it was kind of shaky. It was kind of all over the place. What if we [00:03:00] came down and did a video training? So for, I knew it, he is given me the whole lower part of the state. Now, I still have the same title as assistant to the production director. I didn't get promoted. ~I didn't get, ~I didn't get a pay raise, but he gave me a book called next generation leader by Andy Stanley.
And that jumpstarted my leadership journey. Then I went into 21 irrefutable laws of leadership. I went into five levels of leadership creating magic. There's so many I went through during that time. ~So I was in the season. that time of really serving and connecting.~ So fast forward, I actually get a promotion.
I go to Spartanburg, which is about 50 minutes away. And I'm leading an audio guy who is so good. A lighting girl, which you don't see a lot of girls in production, especially in the lighting world. She was phenomenal. And then I had a worship leader that was the top worship. I mean, just his voice is just amazing and [00:04:00] how he can lead a room.
And so I had a team that was like stellar. I'm like, this is going to be kind of easy. And it really was. I mean, there was a time that the reason I left that position. was I got to a point where I was like, you know, I could not show up for six weeks and nobody would even notice. ~And that's where you want to be, right?~
That's where you want to be. That's a high level of leadership. That's where I want to be in our company, where I don't have to show up and it just keeps rolling. ~And. Yeah. ~So I just got, it just wasn't challenging at that point and I went and did something else inside the organization, but here's the thing.
So the audio guy actually led the video team. The video team was all volunteers.
Speaker 6: Hmm.
Speaker 5: And I remember Erin saying, Evan, how do you 7, 8, 9 video volunteers to show up at six o'clock on a Sunday and give up their whole Sunday morning and they're not getting paid. And that I [00:05:00] was just like, wow, you know what we did looking back, ~it just, ~it just clicked with me ~looking back.~
We did meetings before the service. And it was inspirational. ~We, ~we would share something to inspire them. We had breakfast there. ~You know, we broke bread together. We sat there together. ~We spent time with each other. And we made the atmosphere fun. You got to. Right. You know, like production wise back then, I mean, it was a lot of pressure.
Like, you couldn't miss, and we did miss camera shots or something like that. Are somebody's microphones on that shouldn't be on, you know, those are things I could go having to, cause my role was the service producer, make sure everything's flowing good. And I would go have those conversations and they knew that I was for them because.
I had so much equity with them.
Speaker 4: ~Yeah. ~You'd built relationships and then through those relationships, they were able to look at you and see like, okay, as a leader, ~Evan is, ~Evan is positive, right? Evan is approachable. Evan is going to be a problem [00:06:00] solver. ~And~ he's also going to create an atmosphere that you can have a fun experience while you're doing some kind of stressful, difficult work.
And
Speaker 5: ~I'm,~ I'm so new. I'm so green. I am sure I'm messing up. I remember doing one on ones with my team and ~the, ~the struggle was ~they, ~those two out of the three people I led during that time, they were reporting to the campus pastor. ~Well, ~when they created ~this position. I took ~this position, it was brand new, and now I come in under the org chart under the campus pastor.
So I'm ~recording, ~reporting to the campus pastor. They're reporting to me. And the two guys that were reporting to the campus pastor, they were all friends. So the campus pastor is like, Hey, here's your direct report. So I went in, not with ~like ~open arms. I mean, ~they were, they, ~they accepted me. I mean, it wasn't like resistance, but ~they, ~I had to gain a lot of equity with them.
I let them know that, Hey, I'm for you. Like, I'm not going to tell you how to do your job. Right. You guys are freaking experts. ~And it's like, ~I'm just here to support you and whatever you need. And, you know, I [00:07:00] didn't know this then, but knowing it now, my job as a leader is to make the right decisions. The people that lead
Speaker 4: successful, you know, I love that you just said that.
Cause if I want to share just a couple of things as, as you went through that journey, the first thing I think is an incredible way to look at, because likely if you're listening to this, I would assume that either you're, you're within a for profit company, or you might own one, you're a leader within one of them.
But I think it's a really interesting perspective to think about What if we thought about everyone that's showing up within our organization as volunteers, what might we do as leaders differently? Cause here's the thing. If you didn't create what you did with that team, you would have had inconsistency.
And when you would have had inconsistency now, like, I mean, how many people are showing up to those services? I'm not sure, right? So ~like that, ~that small team of people ~in ~being able to nurture that small team of people would have had a direct impact on thousands of people. So I think it's just kind of an [00:08:00] interesting way to ~like, just ~take a quick second to think about where you're at, where your feet are and what if you thought about the people around you as volunteers just for a moment, just to see if that might, ~you know, ~make something come forward in the soul.
Speaker 5: ~Yeah. Yeah. ~Yeah. You're my first thing I think of is ~I'm going to ~how I communicate to my team would be different. It's interesting, ~right? ~Right. Like I'm sitting here thinking you saw me pause~ I have to, you're, ~you're a lot more thoughtful and what you say when people are showing up, giving up their time.
And before we started the services, like we all connected and you know what we said every Sunday. Is it somebody's first Sunday today? We do this. And I say this to our team. We do this every Sunday, two, three, sometimes four times a Sunday. And we, we do this. It's just, this is just what we do. ~Yeah. ~And take it to the salon world.
~Yeah. ~You've done a hundred thousands of [00:09:00] balayages. ~Yep. ~But this is somebody's first balayage today.
Speaker 4: ~First time with you. ~First time experiencing the company. We have
Speaker 5: all these people coming in today, but one of them just found out that they have cancer this past week. Right. You know, like now it shifts to, wow, I'm, I'm working with individuals now, not just, oh, I got six people today or seven people.
~It's like, no, I've got six individual people. ~People that I could have a small impact on their life another
Speaker 4: thing. I want to share real quick Is ~when ~when you talked about it, you said the word ~what ~what I heard was you were building equity And I was really thankful for the way you talked about that.
And I think again like this like You know, your leadership journey began in a not for profit type of situation. And when you said that, I was like, wait a minute. What if we thought about the way that we build equity with people? Cause like when I think of it right away, it's equity in a home. ~Most, ~most people that's going to be one of the most common things, maybe an auto loan, but that might get into a different type of situation.
But if you think about the way that equity is structured when it's alone, there's a portion of it, [00:10:00] the interest that doesn't, that's not your equity. You're paying back. ~Right? ~So that's not something that you get ~in ~in the beginning of a loan, ~right? ~In the beginning of a relationship, the amount of interest that you're paying is actually the highest.
The amount of equity that you get in the beginning is actually the smallest, ~right? It's interesting, right? So if we, ~if we think about The relationships that we're building and as we're transcending up through the five levels of leadership, that equity in the beginning, it would make more sense that you might not be able to move the needles as far and fast as what you want to.
Now, especially if I go back into like young versions of myself as a leader, I'm like, I could write a book about what you should not do. ~Right. When I go back, especially, you know, before getting self employed, ~when I got self employed, the mistakes I made actually fell back on me when I worked for other people's companies.
Oh, oh yeah. You know what? ~I wasn't, ~I wasn't maybe the best team player in one of these situations, but a couple of people left that no skin off my back. A lot of the situations I was in, I was doing direct sales. So what that meant was I get to sell more. ~Interesting situation. But ~as you talked about equity, the way that I heard it was, [00:11:00] maybe think of it from the principal equity portion of it so that we can think about how much work we actually need to do to be able to build equity with people.
~Keep going with that, though.~
Speaker 5: Yeah. So the whole equity piece, I mean, ~I do that. ~I do that now, and I was talking to, I had this thought, and I had lunch with a mentor of mine. I thought, getting equity with people, you can do simple things. It could be as easy as showing up to someone's baby shower.
Speaker 6: Mm hmm.
Speaker 5: Or getting them, I'll tell you what, like, ~if you're, ~if you're a leader and you're listening to this, you love on other people's kids, especially for a woman, you love on their kids, tons of equity. ~And I had this thought, I was like, wait, is this manipulation? ~
Speaker 6: ~And so~
Speaker 5: it, it held, it was heavy on me. And so I called my mentor, I was like, hey, can we get breakfast?
He's like, yeah. So we sat down, I was like, okay, I'm there to, like, if I sweep hair. And like, I'm doing [00:12:00] all these things to build equity with our team. I definitely want to serve them and whatnot. And I was like, is this manipulation? And he, it was like so quick. He said, if you're doing it for your game, it's manipulation.
If you're doing it ~for their game, it's leadership. ~for their gain. Sure. Leadership. ~I was like, okay, well, ~I'm, my heart's in the right place. I'm doing it to support them. I'm not doing it to build me up. Yeah. ~You know, honestly, ~if I was trying to build me up, I wouldn't be sweeping here. ~Right. ~Right. That would be right beneath me.
Speaker 4: So you have more quote unquote important. Things to do. Right. ~And ~and I love that example. 'cause it, it's something honestly, I mean we have a go on so often in our salon company. ~I, one of, one of the things, and it's funny 'cause I'm gonna tell you there's a portion of the salon and I love, like if I am, if I have a free moment.~
~I'm, I'm down to fold towels. I'm down to do capes like that. It's a part of the operation. But ~one of the things I get to do from the vantage point that I stand is I have complete visibility of our front desk, all of our salon coordinators, and I have complete visibility of all of our stations. And what I think is so interesting is when there is an understanding between the artist and the client.
In the coordinator as people are coming into our building and as people are [00:13:00] checking on leaving our building When I watch them sometimes just move in unison. Sometimes the coordinator takes over finishes out the appointment gets everything pre booked you know is there at a bag retail make sure that we have all those pieces taken care of for them and then ~sometimes ~Sometimes the artist will actually want to do that, right?
It might be that, you know, it's a complicated next service to book, or maybe, you know, we're switching them up to something different on retail and we want to make sure they have an understanding of how to use it. Whatever the situation is, the coordinator won't, they might check in, but sometimes they'll just censor like, okay, they're doing my job.
I'm going to go reset their station and do quote unquote their job. Right? And I watched this just happen, Evan, and again, like, this is where the person, if you were to go and do that move, they're like, well, it's not in my job description. ~You know what? I'm going to take a drink of water. I'm going to open up the small screen, do a little bit of scrolling, you know, whatever that would be.~
But they're consciously choosing in the moment, like, okay, I see that they're doing, they're, they're doing my role. How can I show up for them right now?
Speaker 5: There's a difference between a group of people and a team.
Speaker 6: Mm. ~Mm hmm. Mm hmm.~
Speaker 5: There's a lot of people that think [00:14:00] they have a team, but you just have a group of people.
Like that's a team atmosphere. And the key, the, as you were saying all that, I was like, that's awareness.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: High level, like you have to have awareness of what is going on. We have in our break room, we have a TV ~with ~with. Not all of our security cameras, but the ones up front and the color bar area and the cutting area, the shampoo room, because I want our team to know like, where does people need help at?
And it's great because they'll come back and they're like, Hey, I need to finish cutting. Can you shampoo such and such? And they're like, well, who are they? And they're like, Oh, they're sitting right here in this chair. Beautiful. So now they don't have to go up and be like, Hey, who's Janet?
Speaker 4: ~You know what I mean?~
I want to take a quick moment. I'm going to. Shout out a couple of people on our team real quick, because as you were given that example first out we had just her name is Emily and we had just brought her into our team. She was a client of the salon in my mind. I think it's been somewhere around like three or four years.
But she came out of a not for [00:15:00] profit interestingly enough. And Came into our company. She's like, I'd love to do an apprenticeship with you guys. You're like, Hey, we need to work together for six months before we go into that. The point that I want to share though, is Roxy, who is our lead salon coordinator ~and, ~and has a servant leaders salon, servant leader's heart and is literally the sun shining in the morning of the day.
She we've been optimizing our training systems for those coordinators and this is the fastest and most proficient that we have ever had someone move through that training program. And the thing I will tell you about Emily that I want, I was watching this on like, I think she was already doing this when she was shadowing.
So in the shadow, you're not even compensated at that point. You're not even hired yet. She already was moving. to help anywhere that she could in the company. And now that she actually understands it at a high level, good Lord. You can watch this human. I mean, I think I'm fast in the sense of awareness by the time I'm thinking that she's already [00:16:00] there.
~And I'm a competitive person, so it kind of gets, that's~
Speaker 5: the people, those people we want to hire. Yeah. We want to hire people that are, that have awareness. That's what you want to build around in your team, right? And one of the things, I mean, this isn't like a hiring episode, but I mean, how they dress, that's awareness.
Like you're coming to an interview. Yep. If they're dressed like sloppy, I'm like, they have a low sense of awareness. Yeah. It's how they present themselves. Self esteem. You know, all those things. Yeah. ~Their, their, ~their posture. ~Yep. ~I asked if you have any questions, if they're like no, I'm like, Come on.
This is awareness. Like this is where you're going to, hopefully you're going to choose to build your career.
Speaker 4: ~Yep. ~Which I think it's also like in those moments of it, like I look at awareness and then there's the choice to engage because it like, man, that was one thing we've been saying the word execute a lot within like completing tasks.
And like, it's actually like the first step is you have to engage. ~Right. ~But ~as, as I, ~as I look through ~that, That is that piece ~that when ~you look in you and ~you want to build team, do you need people that are going to have low awareness or high awareness? High awareness. Do you need people that are low engagement centered or [00:17:00] high engagement centered?
~Right? We're getting a little bit off topic too, but this is a, we're going to have to go back to this one. I'm about to get ~
Speaker 5: ~real off topic. There's a There's a football. You said execute. I always remember ~there's a football coach from the seventies or eighties. It was Tampa Bay Buccaneers. So we heard this and they were playing terribly.
They were losing. I think they haven't won a game all year and it was halftime and he's walking off the field and the reporter sticks a microphone in his face says, Hey, what do you think about the execution of your team? He says, I'm all for it.
~I'm sorry for any of you, if I just~
Speaker 4: blew your eardrums out ~that~
Speaker 5: that was, so ~someone, ~someone says execute. I kind of smile because I think about that. ~What a great, ~what a great statement.
Speaker 4: I'm just thinking of, you know, as, as the world famous green Bay Packers, if they would ever lose a game in, in one of our head coaches would say something like that.
How funny it'd be anyway. ~I'm off. Epic. Okay. So let's~ so we ~go through, you ~go through the beginning of your leadership. ~Let's now. Let's now. ~Let's now jump into when you got into, because again, I think there's a different thing because you know, you move into your role within your salon company, ~you and ~you and Erin ~are, ~are leading ~this, ~this ship, right?
So ~when, ~when you think about your leadership [00:18:00] style transcending, as you came into there, what were you seeing in yourself and what were you kind of aware of and what were the things you were like, Oh. This is different.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Well, I'm working with all females. So that was definitely different atmosphere.
~And which is great by choice.~
Speaker 4: And I want to say that cause I, if I had a lower inflection in my voice, when I said same, I do this by choice to be very clear, right? This is by choice. And also the dynamic group of people, because I will tell you every other industry, they're like, oh, you poor thing.
I'm like, not at all. Not at all. ~No. ~The amount of things that I have awareness to and the amount of things that I can learn by an open mind as a male. ~Do~
Speaker 5: you
Speaker 4: have any details
Speaker 5: that you get that there's nothing that goes unnoticed. ~100%.~
Speaker 4: 100%.
Speaker 5: And so when I came on, I didn't, I didn't, again, I didn't know anything.
So I had to lean on them a lot, which I think was very, I thought I was going to be in the office pitching vision, pitching vision, but I [00:19:00] was working front desk and when working front desk, I had to lean on them a lot, which I gained a lot of equity from them and throughout the year, especially after COVID, we went through this season of, Hey, just.
Like we wanted our team to be healthy and at the time we had people that didn't want to work Saturdays and didn't want to, and we were just like, Hey, like life is short. Don't work. ~Don't. ~If you don't want to work Saturdays, don't work Saturdays. You don't want to work this. Don't worry. You don't take these days off, take it off.
And then we realized financially our company's taken a hit. And then people were, you know, ~there was, ~there was a fear. ~Some that I feel like we're, ~I feel like we're doing a lot of hiring right now. I think at the time it was like average hours, average hours that people were working were like 24. Well, yeah, ~we got to,~ we got to get more people in here because if you have someone working, say full time is 30 [00:20:00] hours and they're working 15, right?
Well, you got to find another person to pick up those hours to find. So now we've kind of steered our leadership with, Hey, we want you to be healthy, but ~we got, ~we have to run a business as well. And our team right now is behind that. ~I can, I,~ I think I can interview every one of our team about, Hey, have you missed a wedding?
Have you missed a baby shower? Have you missed a. Vacation, like everybody you can have off whenever, literally, ~but, ~but when was the
Speaker 4: last time you
Speaker 5: ~said, no,~
I don't know. ~Same. I~
Speaker 4: literally, as you said that I was like, I don't remember the last time that there was a request out that came through our organization ~that was like, I'm so sorry, but we ~
Speaker 5: ~had to do some, we had to do some restructuring on Saturdays and things like that. And we just started hiring different too.~
We hired people now that say, Hey. That's gonna help me grow. I'll do Saturdays for a season right instead of in the interview process. Do I have to work Saturdays? It's like okay, you you don't You don't want it. Yeah. And like, I mean, we're looking for hungry, humble, hardworking, nice, coachable people. I mean, you don't have to on the outside world, [00:21:00] but you would here.
Yeah. I'm like, look, this is the path to be successful. Can you go work somewhere else and not have to work Saturdays? Yeah. Possibly. Or if you've got something like we're going to take every person differently.
Speaker 4: Right. ~Because you have to. ~
Speaker 5: ~Yeah. Yeah. ~Successful people do things that. Normal people don't want to do people like us do things like this.
~Yeah,~
Speaker 4: Simon Sinek.
Speaker 5: Yeah to you I mean we yes funny because when you were coming into town, I thought we'd go play golf tomorrow last night You know and we haven't had a spare minute literally and ~this is ~this is what? separates us from People that do business and close it after a year because they're like, this is tough.
Yep. Well, we kind of knew this was going to be tough going in anyway, I look, I mean,
Speaker 4: you got it, you got a multitask, right? And I mean, even we were, I was yesterday, I was filming, I was, I was running cameras for what we were filming for the artists Academy. I was responding to we have a really beautiful event coming up in our [00:22:00] salon.
And then I also did. All of our back end payroll taxes, and I was doing all those at the same point, right? And it isn't, it isn't a flex on multitasking. It's more of the focus of like, sometimes as a leader, people like us do things like this. I have responsibilities. I have, I'm, I'm going to be where my feet are.
I also have chosen a responsibility that sometimes I got a firefight. Sometimes I get to be there. Sometimes it can't be. So when you went into the, when you went into front desk and I love it. Again, Evan, the amount of consistencies here when I was going to school working for my business partner in the distribution company, my first job in the salon was on the front desk, right?
And the amount of awareness, ~and again, I'm, I'm, Roxy, this is the second time, please know. ~The amount of awareness when you have someone that is in that lead position in those, in those roles, when they have amazing awareness and when they develop and when they equip themselves in that way, it's so beautiful.
So you're, you, you get into that role. You realize in the beginning, like I have a lot to learn. [00:23:00] And then I also have this positional title that's challenging, right? Cause as, as we've gone through and this equity piece has really, really been a lot of our conversation, but how did you do this? ~Well, it's really ~
Speaker 5: ~hard to be, yeah.~
To have the title like you are is my wife and I, but. You know, what I said went, you know, as the owner of the company, but I didn't know Jack. Yeah. So I put down the title humble. I put down the title and I was like, look, I'm, I'm leaning on you. Yeah. And I flipped the, you know, you look at a, was a totem pole where, you know, the owner sits at the top.
I flipped that upside down. And I was like, Hey, I, I need you guys. To help me. To help me. Yeah. And I mean, there was times where I would pick up three products and go in the back and be like, Hey, what is, what is this? Why would anybody need this ? I said, what's the difference between this and this and that?
Yep. 'cause these seemed like the same to me. And again, I gained a ton of equity with our team and I didn't come in like [00:24:00] trying to be a know-it-all. ~Yeah. You still don't, I still don't come in being a know-It-all~
Speaker 4: you have a, you have not a sense ~of ~of unhealthy ego that comes from you. At all. Well, ~You are, ~you are a resourceful and confident human, but in your deployment of that, ~it, you, you have, ~you have a humbleness to it and you're, it's just such a natural thing.
And I think that's a part as leaders today, like forget about the title, forget about all the things that come with it. At the end of the day, we're in the people business. Right. ~You execute that in, sorry, , really trying to get away from this word, you. ~You have an awareness of how to show up and meet someone where they're at, and then also understand immediately, is it my job to be the smartest person in the room or is this a learning opportunity?
Speaker 5: Well, yes, I am working on that. I haven't always showed up that way, but the key thing is awareness. Yeah. And when you mess up, you apologize. my job is to, and your job, you, you're the same mindset, the same job and it's to make our team successful. And if they're not winning, then I'm not winning.
I want them to win [00:25:00] whatever that is ~in our one on ones. I know we've got to wrap this up ~in our one on ones. What are your personal, financial and
---
Speaker 5: professional goals? And I want to help you win those. ~Let me help you~
Speaker 4: move the needle. So ~the, ~the thing I think I want to distill from it is we've, we talked about a bunch of different pieces there.
I think first out, think about your team as volunteers that just, just even if you spent five minutes on a journal a little bit. I think that could really change some things within your organization. Next one is this idea ~of, of think ~of, think of the mortgage and how you build equity with people. Just because I give you, you know, ~if, ~if your house payment is four grand, right?
Just because you gave the bank four grand this month doesn't mean that your equity went up by four grand. Right. It's what the bank is choosing to make that value. Right. So that's another interesting thing that I want to put there. This last one, I think that we've both discovered is also to understand that ~when in, ~in the way that we lead in our organizations, if we remember to take that [00:26:00] and go from owner at the top team at the bottom to flip that thing upside down, be a salon servant leader, be an owner that supports your entire team.
~We've Those, ~those are three points. ~Hey anything else you want to add? No, we're at 30 minutes here. ~Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you guys soon. Hope you enjoyed.
