Aaron Trahan is a distinguished former executive of a billion-dollar company and a current performance mindset coach. Aaron delves into his experiences of growing from a small-town upbringing to leading major corporate ventures before the age of 30. He emphasizes the importance of continuous improvement, even at the height of success, and discusses the pitfalls companies like Conn's faced due to complacency.

Aaron shares insights into maintaining a strong corporate culture and driving innovation to stay competitive. He illustrates this with examples from companies like Apple, which thrived by continually reinventing itself. Aaron also highlights the critical need for leaders to remain adaptable, fostering environments that challenge the status quo and prioritize learning and growth over stability and comfort.

Want to learn more about Aaron Trahan's work? Check out his website at https://performancemindsetcoaching.co/.

Connect with Aaron Trahan on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-trahan-6135909/.

Key Points with Timestamps:

• 00:00:30 - Introduction to the podcast and its focus on impactful leadership.
• 00:01:20 - Aaron Trahan's background and transition from a senior executive to a leadership coach.
• 00:04:17 - Discussion on inherent leadership qualities versus learned skills.
• 00:06:09 - Importance of execution and initiative in career advancement.
• 00:10:00 - How success can lead to complacency and affect company culture.
• 00:13:29 - Apple's strategy of innovation by disrupting its own products like the iPod.
• 00:19:23 - The risks of not being open to feedback and new ideas in maintaining a competitive edge.
• 00:26:01 - The impact of leadership behavior on organizational culture.
• 00:32:33 - The significance of systems and processes in achieving consistent results.

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;30;20
Craig Andrews
I was in a coma for six weeks while the doctors told my wife I was going to die. When I woke up, she told me the most fantastic story. My team kept running the business without me. Freelancers reached out to my team and said, we will do whatever it takes. As long as Craig's in the hospital. I consider that the greatest accomplishment of my career.

00;00;30;23 - 00;00;51;10
Craig Andrews
My name is Craig Andrews and this is the Leaders and Legacies podcast where we talk to leaders creating an impact beyond themselves. At the end of today's interview, I'll tell you how you can be the next leader featured on the show.

00;00;51;10 - 00;01;20;10
Craig Andrews
Today I want to welcome Aaron Trahan. Aaron has a really interesting background. she was a senior executive of a publicly traded. Billion dollar business by age 30. But today, he's really focused largely on helping. SMB owners, operators and executives, grow their businesses. And so this can be a real treat. You know, we're going to have somebody who's.

00;01;20;13 - 00;01;46;12
Craig Andrews
Been in large companies and small companies had to learn some lessons along the way. And it's led them to, form performance mindset. Coaching his current coaching company that that works with executives and owners. And so, longtime Pat Garen lives here in Austin. not too far from me and Aaron. Great to have you.

00;01;46;14 - 00;01;49;27
Aaron Trahan
Hey, Greg. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to a good discussion.

00;01;49;29 - 00;01;57;07
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So the, First off, I forgot to ask. Where'd you grow up?

00;01;57;10 - 00;02;04;18
Aaron Trahan
You know what? I. I grew up in a small southeast Texas town by the name of orange. Just come.

00;02;04;19 - 00;02;05;25
Craig Andrews
Out. My goodness.

00;02;05;28 - 00;02;28;11
Aaron Trahan
Just, talk in the furthest southeast point you can get. A lot of people call it the armpit of the country. It's just kind of right there at, the Gulf of Mexico and Louisiana border. yeah. Born in born and raised there. And eventually, you know, work took me out to, the woodlands area in Houston, and I got recruited.

00;02;28;13 - 00;02;38;27
Aaron Trahan
spent some time in Indianapolis, Seattle, and then, my family and I made our way back about three years ago to the to the Austin area. So we're we're here now. We're back.

00;02;39;00 - 00;02;50;19
Craig Andrews
Wow. You know, and. You know, I haven't spent much time in that part of Texas. I usually try to celebrate as I'm passing through.

00;02;50;21 - 00;02;55;07
Aaron Trahan
That's a common. That's a common, approach. Yeah.

00;02;55;10 - 00;03;01;18
Craig Andrews
But my impression is orange is the type of town that makes Beaumont look good.

00;03;01;20 - 00;03;20;29
Aaron Trahan
Well, you know, it's it's kind of one of those where growing up, Beaumont was kind of the big city for us, right? You know, Little Orange didn't didn't have a whole lot. so, you know, Beaumont was our. It was our kind of big city. but yeah, I think in terms of. Yeah, I think there's different aspects to it now.

00;03;21;01 - 00;03;39;20
Aaron Trahan
You know, full disclosure, it was. Yeah, great small, tight knit community. It was kind of one of those everybody knew everybody type of thing. So not sure I could live there today, but certainly certainly value the upbringing that it, that it afforded.

00;03;39;22 - 00;04;06;27
Craig Andrews
You know, and so one of the questions that's in my mind is, and I would imagine nobody, you know, growing up envisioned you being a senior executive in $1 billion company by age 30. You know, and I think we have this mindset that everybody that runs big companies came from big cities, came from, you know, complex metropolitan areas.

00;04;07;00 - 00;04;07;27
Aaron Trahan
Right.

00;04;07;29 - 00;04;17;24
Craig Andrews
And that's just simply not true. But how. Help me connect the dots. How did you get from orange to senior exec.

00;04;17;26 - 00;04;39;02
Aaron Trahan
Yeah. You know, it's I can ask the question a lot. I was actually speaking at a leadership conference not too long ago. And, you know, the question always comes up is around leadership up and finding success. Like, are some people just born with it, or can it be can it be created, can it be learned? And, you know, I use my story as a perfect example.

00;04;39;04 - 00;05;03;08
Aaron Trahan
I think if you if you were to go back and interview my teachers either in elementary hell, even high school, right. I don't think that there would be a whole lot there yet. Maybe. Sure I was, I was sharp, but I wouldn't say anything wildly above average. And there was no nothing necessarily that pointed out that, oh, that that kid's destined for greatness, right?

00;05;03;08 - 00;05;42;01
Aaron Trahan
He's. I didn't graduate high school and go to Harvard. I didn't get into one of these elite institutions. but I think the message is when you can just stay curious, when you can commit yourself to being a lifelong learner. It really is a sustainable, competitive advantage that you can always give yourself. and so for me, I, you know, while I was in college, I was able to get an internship at a, at a company that was actually headquartered there in Beaumont and kind of got to see how the inside of a corporation works.

00;05;42;01 - 00;06;09;23
Aaron Trahan
The company just so happened to be going from being a privately run family business to IPO going on on the Nasdaq. So I got to see that, that transformation. And I really did just commit to being the best student in the room. And what I learned very quickly and and what led me to that point to becoming a senior executive was, you know, the companies value different things.

00;06;09;23 - 00;06;38;05
Aaron Trahan
But I think kind of one of the skill sets or attributes that's pretty widely, universally valued is just the ability to get things done. And I, for whatever reason, was able to connect those dots very early on. very early on. Make the right relationships, understand from a zoomed out perspective how the whole machine work. and really just provided myself, I was willing to run through walls that other people wouldn't.

00;06;38;07 - 00;06;52;14
Aaron Trahan
And as a result, I was able to get more done and execute at a level that very few others were able to. And that became kind of the accelerated, you know, climb up the corporate ladder, so to speak, for me.

00;06;52;17 - 00;07;04;01
Craig Andrews
Yeah. And was that climb primarily at cons? It was. Yeah. And for those that don't know, it was was are they still in business?

00;07;04;03 - 00;07;36;25
Aaron Trahan
It's it's touch and go. Yeah. I think it's it's, an interesting time period for the company, but yeah, they, they've, they've had some strategic missteps, over the years. So, not, not the company it once was, but yeah, I mean, at one point in time when I joined the company, it was a small little regional appliance and electronics retail, store that, you know, we were able to grow to a, kind of a multi regional hundred and 70 stores across 13 states.

00;07;36;28 - 00;07;58;08
Aaron Trahan
and yeah, getting to see all the good, the bad and the ugly that really transforms this legacy small business into, you know, into a growing almost national retailer was, you know, so much, so much learnings that that I was able to take away from that. And still apply today.

00;07;58;10 - 00;08;11;06
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I was trying to remember. Yeah, they were primarily appliances. And boy, that's a, that's a business that's been disrupted in so many different ways.

00;08;11;08 - 00;08;14;14
Aaron Trahan
That's right, that's right.

00;08;14;16 - 00;08;32;20
Craig Andrews
You know, and there's kind of a reminder there. You know, it's I, I don't know what your take is and I'd be interested in, but the in starting about five years ago, I, I started saying, I think we're witnessing the apex of Google and people are like, you're not served monopoly. They're going to be in monopoly forever.

00;08;32;21 - 00;09;01;19
Craig Andrews
I'm like, you know, I've heard that line before. I think it was said about Microsoft and, and recently, you know, Google's Google has been making a lot of missteps and, and when you dig under the hood, it turns out a lot of these things started in 2019. Some decisions they made in 2019 where I just kind of intuitively said, I think we're witnessing the apex of Google, right.

00;09;01;22 - 00;09;29;19
Craig Andrews
And I was looking at other factors. I didn't know these things were going on, but I think that's the risk. You know, is it's I don't know what's I mean, what's what's your perspective? How do companies like Conn's and Google get it? And Google's still very strong. Nobody's calling for that. But how do these companies that were once juggernauts like cons how do they fall.

00;09;29;19 - 00;09;31;27
Craig Andrews
What what happened.

00;09;32;00 - 00;10;00;22
Aaron Trahan
Yeah I think the the big lesson here is how success can breed complacency. And the second that you think that you're the exception or that that'll never happen to us, we're, you know, we're a high flying company. We'll never we'll never get complacent. there are no exceptions. It complacency is going to show up. It it's going to stress test your culture.

00;10;00;24 - 00;10;33;09
Aaron Trahan
and look you this is a universal rule. It happens in life and sports and business. You see championship teams like, all the time. How much more difficult it was to try to repeat as champions than it was to win the title the first time you mentioned Google. But there's other ones. I mean, fortune 500 companies say the exact same thing, that maintaining and sustaining, you know, either number one market share or industry or sector dominance is far more difficult than it was kind of getting to that position in the first place as a, as an underdog.

00;10;33;09 - 00;11;14;19
Aaron Trahan
And so I think what you see lack, in so many of these organizations is just the, the spirit and the underlying foundation of the culture being that of continuous improvement. Because once you kind of reach whatever level you're striving for, it's like what's what's going to be that thing that keeps pulling you forward, that keeps you, you know, wanting to innovate, that's willing to accept some risk, maybe even willing to disrupt your own business, to stay ahead of the curve as you get bigger, as you become more successful, it's just a byproduct that you become a bit more risk averse.

00;11;14;19 - 00;11;39;16
Aaron Trahan
You now want to take the foot off the accelerator a bit and maybe start opting for cruise control in some in some areas. And I think that comes back to haunt so many companies. And so the message here is, is that continuous improvement is what so many companies lack after they kind of reach this, you know, this milestone of success.

00;11;39;18 - 00;12;09;19
Aaron Trahan
And the second that you think you have it all figured out, the second that you think you have your market locked down, I mean, the graveyard is full of company is that you go back 40 years, 30 years, 20 years, and you think about some of the name brands of companies back then that people couldn't fathom not being at the top of their field, whether it was Sears, whether it was Sony or whether it was, you know, GM, Ford, you name it.

00;12;09;19 - 00;12;36;18
Aaron Trahan
But you go back 20, 30 years ago and some of these company brands like people. And that point in time could not imagine Sears not being the biggest retailer, Sony not being the biggest electronics brand. You know, the list goes on and on and on. But nobody stays number one forever. you hear Jeff Bezos talk about this at Amazon all the time is that someone is going to come and take our position one day.

00;12;36;20 - 00;13;05;27
Aaron Trahan
It's our job to prolong that as long as possible by staying committed to continuous improvement, to challenging all of the status quo, never gets stuck in positions within the company of doing things just because. The way that this is just the way it's always been done. and that's hard to do when after you, after you have success to take that type of view of continuous improvement on the business when so much is is already working.

00;13;05;29 - 00;13;12;14
Aaron Trahan
But what's working is in the past, that same level of success is not guaranteed. Looking forward.

00;13;12;17 - 00;13;29;10
Craig Andrews
You know, one of the examples I think of when when you were talking, the iPod was a product that made Apple wildly profitable. They were barely profitable until they came out with the iPod. Then they were wildly profitable.

00;13;29;12 - 00;13;34;05
Aaron Trahan
You could argue. You could argue it saved the company. Without the iPod. There may not even be an Apple to that.

00;13;34;08 - 00;13;59;16
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And then ever within a few years, a very few years, Steve Jobs said about destroying the iPod business. Right? I mean, that takes guts. You're the product that saved your company. You're actively working to destroy.

00;13;59;18 - 00;14;25;09
Aaron Trahan
Yeah, exceptionally difficult to do to or to have a culture that even embraces that. That's that's why Apple is Apple and so many others, like some of the ones we've already named, never continue to find that next level after the next levels, because, yeah, there's this risk aversion that's being adopted throughout the organization. We got to protect the golden goose.

00;14;25;09 - 00;14;48;07
Aaron Trahan
We, you know, we just got to maintain what we're now at a place of just maintaining and just kind of keeping the status quo, when in reality, when you look around, I think even the term status quo is one of the biggest myths, right? Whether it's society, culture or business consumer preference, nothing stays the same for a long period of time.

00;14;48;09 - 00;15;03;15
Aaron Trahan
It may not be evolving very quickly, but you can bet it's always changing. So if you're operating in the status quo, type of environment or culture, you are by definition falling behind because nothing stays the same.

00;15;03;17 - 00;15;27;27
Craig Andrews
Yeah. And I think that's that's hard for some people to hear. I think back in my own history, you know, I used to market semiconductors for mobile phones, and we had a product that was my product that just killed it. We we knocked our competition on their feet, flat on their butt for two years straight. I mean, it was a combination of, a great product.

00;15;27;27 - 00;15;35;24
Craig Andrews
It was truly a great product and then a good marketing. I'll speak more. I did the marketing, so I'll say the product was great, the marketing was.

00;15;35;24 - 00;15;38;04
Aaron Trahan
Good, but.

00;15;38;07 - 00;16;08;24
Craig Andrews
The, But anyway, as we were moving on to the following products, I had a conversation with the head of the design team and he told me so. Craig, customers love our products are always going to buy our products. Why are you worried? And a few. Yeah, I said, damn. I processed that and probably a half hour hour later I went to the GM's office and said, Joe, I'm worried that our competitors are hungrier than we are.

00;16;09;27 - 00;16;29;05
Craig Andrews
And he got upset with me and he actually threw me out of his office. He was like, no, that's not true. And within nine months, we were deploying one of our most valuable resources to Japan or not to Korea, not in a strategic, not a tactical world. Basically, try to hang on to every bit of Samsung business they could.

00;16;29;07 - 00;16;40;17
Craig Andrews
And we ended up losing that guy because that was a hard job. He ended up leaving the company. But it all started with that belief. Hey, we're on top. We're going to stay on top.

00;16;40;20 - 00;17;01;23
Aaron Trahan
Yeah, I think it was Andy grow from Intel. Right. That has a famous quote, you know, only only the paranoid survive, right? I think having that healthy dose of paranoia, are your competitors coming for you? Are they getting close or are they doing things you're not doing? are they hungrier than you? Are they pushing harder than you?

00;17;01;23 - 00;17;29;14
Aaron Trahan
Are they innovating more than you? yeah. It's. Success has a way of really, you know, really softening the senses and making you believe that you have it all figured out. And look, all businesses, whether you're Apple or a small business or an entrepreneur pre-revenue startup, but all businesses are all made up of the same thing, and that's people.

00;17;29;16 - 00;17;56;08
Aaron Trahan
And so when you look at what are the small little microcosms that form a culture of complacency after success, it starts with the people. And I talk about this all the time with those that I coach. It's it's I have them rate themselves on how effective they are at receiving and gathAarong constructive feedback, because I think it's so important.

00;17;56;10 - 00;18;21;26
Aaron Trahan
And so when you look at what happens with leaders inside of a business, the same thing applies. After they reach a certain level of success, they develop a tendency to start listening more to the things they want to hear, while losing the willingness to listen to the things that they actually most need to hear. That would help them continue to improve and develop.

00;18;21;28 - 00;18;50;19
Aaron Trahan
And so it kind of starts with the people there once once you reach this level of success, the business is growing. You, the leaders, are collecting nice bonuses and feeling good about themselves. That's where it starts and then it rolls downhill. So if you have a leader that's now kind of sliding into the comfort zone, only showing up, maybe giving 30 to 40% of their full potential, not pressing as hard, how do you think the teams underneath them will start responding?

00;18;50;19 - 00;19;23;02
Aaron Trahan
Do you think they're going to show up, and do you think they're going to be hungry and pushing the envelope and, you know, really wanting to shake things up and know. And so it it it's a pervasive kind of cancer that spreads from there because all businesses are made up of people. And this same thing that we're talking about on the company level is exactly what happens on the individual level after those individual leaders reach that certain level of success is where kind of the ego really starts talking.

00;19;23;04 - 00;19;45;01
Aaron Trahan
You look at what you've achieved, you've got it all figured out. This is this is now easy, right? and so that's when they become a bit less open to constructive feedback and want to point to, to the track record, look at, look at what I've done, look at what I have achieved. I'm good. I don't need to I don't need to hear how I can be better.

00;19;45;03 - 00;20;07;19
Aaron Trahan
And that's exactly where it starts. That's why the BlackBerry's of the world couldn't see Apple coming. It's why the Kodak couldn't see the digital, photography market coming. It's why blockbuster couldn't see Netflix coming. It's because when you think you have it all figured out as the very second that you're at risk of getting knocked off that top, top spot.

00;20;07;21 - 00;20;22;12
Craig Andrews
Yeah, well, you mentioned BlackBerry, but the in 2007 when the iPhone was introduced, Nokia had 50% market share of mobile phones. Yeah. You buy a Nokia phone.

00;20;22;15 - 00;20;53;16
Aaron Trahan
No, no. And the BlackBerry CEO is famous for saying at a conference it's like, well, iPhones are toy businesses will never adopt it, right? It's yeah, it's you know, and I think what and that's a really, really smart person. That's a really, really successful person. That's a really solid business leader that said that. So what was behind that statement kind of goes back to the very start of this conversation.

00;20;53;18 - 00;21;04;16
Aaron Trahan
That is what shows up when success breeds complacency. And it's it's to say it just happens over and over and over again.

00;21;04;18 - 00;21;26;14
Craig Andrews
So let me ask you, you know, you talked about the example where somebody on the leadership team is delivAarong 30%. And so this has to be the really hard thing. Let's, you know, let's say you're the owner, executive operator of this company. And you see one of your one of your guys is not performing like he used to.

00;21;26;14 - 00;21;53;01
Craig Andrews
And you look at him and you know, you would not be where you are today if it weren't for him based on his prior acts. That's right. And is probably a good friend of yours. You probably, you know, over the in the course of doing business, you probably became closer friends, not more distant friends. when you're coaching somebody, how do you coach them to have that conversation or what do you coach them to do?

00;21;53;04 - 00;22;16;16
Aaron Trahan
Yeah. You know, I think it's I think it's kind of understanding why, you know, because everybody's operating in an effort to optimize something. It could be that they're just burnout. They they've just kind of got got nothing left. And they're just trying to make it to the next vacation. It could be issues that they're dealing with with their leader.

00;22;16;16 - 00;22;51;12
Aaron Trahan
They not they may not be getting the right clarity, the right context, the right understanding on directions. So they're operating from a position of paralysis, bit. So there's a number of different things. What that causes it. But I think the first thing is it kind of goes back to that important point we talked about earlier. I think when you see something like that happening, it's actually worse for you to ignore it as compared to having the difficult conversation and providing the feedback of just saying, hey, you're not.

00;22;51;14 - 00;23;16;22
Aaron Trahan
I've seen you at your at your best, I've seen you operate at your highest level and you haven't. You're not there. Like, is there something, is there something going on? Is there a reason you're not you're not. This the same level that we've seen you have before that's kind of got you to this level. and I think those conversation in a lot of cases are missing, and it could be for a lot of different reasons.

00;23;16;22 - 00;23;49;04
Aaron Trahan
But I think it's it also can show up as a symptom of the culture or the environment. And so what is the standard what what's kind of I think every team, every organization kind of has that standard of excellence. And is what the organization trying to accomplish. Is it going to be that gravitational pull, that stretching people to perform at their best, or is it allowing people to just stay under the radar and kind of operate at that, at that 30%?

00;23;49;06 - 00;24;20;20
Aaron Trahan
and so I would say it's it's more impactful for the leaders above to see that on the teams below them. That's there. That's where it has to. That's where it has to start. Right? Because if the leaders above them are seeing these different, what I kind of call complacency spots starting to starting to pop up, that's just going to be addressed as soon as possible, because you have to know that because of the way gravity works, things roll downhill much faster than you're able to push them uphill.

00;24;20;22 - 00;24;49;02
Aaron Trahan
So if we're talking about a leader and he's getting, you know, feedback from someone underneath him versus feedback from someone above him, there's only gonna be so much that a subordinate is going to be able to say or do to kind of kickstart them back into the high level, but if that the higher level leaders are driving the standard, they're making sure that everybody is really stretching for that continuous improvement.

00;24;49;05 - 00;25;32;27
Aaron Trahan
That's, I would argue, is more important because when you have those spots of complacency, that person may have a team of five, ten, 15, it, it, it almost becomes that, that pervasive cancer, if they see their leader acting that way, they're going to start acting close to that way. And if they have teams underneath them. And so I would say as a leader at the top of an organization, the top of a company, you you almost have to have a 24 over seven radar for it, because, you know, if you have any leaders around you that are operating from a place of well below their potential, not coming anywhere close to playing at their highest

00;25;32;27 - 00;26;01;27
Aaron Trahan
level, you need to think about the compounding effect because people will always mirror their leader good, bad or indifferent, right? So if you see one of your leaders doing that, you should automatically and accurately assume that there's probably three or 4 or 5 others that are acting that same way, that's underneath that leader. And so it's it's one of those and I know it feels like whac-a-mole, but that's exactly that's exactly what creates cultures.

00;26;01;27 - 00;26;26;29
Aaron Trahan
And I tell this to leaders all the time. It's not about any fancy wall mural that you have painted. It's not about what shows up on posters or in your email signature. None of that in reality actually matters. What matters when you're trying to build a culture comes down to two things. Is it? It's going to be what your organization sees you tolerate and what they see.

00;26;26;29 - 00;26;48;08
Aaron Trahan
You not tolerating those two things will have an outsized impact on the behaviors that shape your culture more than anything else. So if they see leaders two and three steps above them, letting their leader perform it basically on cruise control, that's your culture, not what's painted on the wall.

00;26;48;10 - 00;27;20;28
Craig Andrews
Yeah. You know, when you were saying that reminded me of there was somebody who, 1099 who would come in a couple times a month and do some work, and they just really weren't up to the job. And for a variety of reasons, I never wanted to cut them loose. I remember one time, Elena, who works for me again, was sitting there and she gave me this look, and it just it's I can still feel the pain of that look and the look.

00;27;20;28 - 00;27;26;20
Craig Andrews
Say, Greg, these are not the type of people you hire.

00;27;26;23 - 00;27;44;04
Craig Andrews
And I just felt horrible, you know, and and that's I think part of the tough thing is when you're making these decisions, these, you know, it's you're not making it just for the the immediate person effect that you're making it for the benefit of the entire team.

00;27;44;06 - 00;28;12;05
Aaron Trahan
That's right. Yeah. And, you know, I work with some smaller businesses who are really starting to ramp up hiring. And, you know, one of the things that we talk about a lot is how can we preserve the culture. Right? And I think an exercise that we go through is what forget the resume, forget the experience, what are going to be those three, 4 or 5, six attributes that you're looking for around culture fit.

00;28;12;07 - 00;28;40;07
Aaron Trahan
And then everybody who interviews this person, if you look at your your workforce or your employee base here and it creates this baseline, whatever that is, the goal should be with every person that you hire at all levels. Are they going to be above that baseline level, meeting on those things that really matter to your culture, the right attributes, the things that you're hiring for on culture fit?

00;28;40;09 - 00;29;04;02
Aaron Trahan
If you can make sure or at least the majority of the time with every new employee you're bringing on from an attribute and characteristics standpoint that they are moving that baseline up. That's one of the single best things that you can do to preserve your culture. But if you don't even know what those key attributes or characteristics are that make your culture great, there's no way to screen for it.

00;29;04;02 - 00;29;28;01
Aaron Trahan
There's no way to hire for it. And so it becomes a, you know, a roulette game where you hope the person you're bringing in is going to enhance the culture. You hope they don't destroy it, but you're not taking a very system, you know, systematic approach to it. And so I think that's one of the most important things, especially as a company grows from five employees to ten, ten employees to 15.

00;29;28;03 - 00;29;57;09
Aaron Trahan
It's like those are such major moments for the business, because that's going to be that's going to be an ultimate deciding factor of what your culture is going to look like 12 months, 18 months, 24 months from now. So getting those early hires right can make or break their or at least make your life easier or harder with creating the culture that you feel is going to be able to help you generate the best results.

00;29;57;11 - 00;30;26;23
Aaron Trahan
And so I think it's understanding what you're hiring for outside of job description, outside of experience, outside of resumé. But what type of person works best in your organization? That's going to be a culture enhancer, not a culture deteriorated. I think one of the best things that small business owners can do is get very clear on that, make that known, share that information, make sure that's not just tribal knowledge stuck in the owner's mind.

00;30;26;25 - 00;30;49;12
Aaron Trahan
Promote what makes a great employee with the organization so that everybody knows it. And when everybody refers their friend or whatever else they know wise, because there's a great culture fit with the right attributes. And then if experience lines up, that's that's even better. But I think it's just making sure you get the right people in the organization.

00;30;49;15 - 00;31;22;29
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, Aaron, this is amazing. I've got a dozen more questions I'd love to ask you. I think you have a lot of wisdom to share with folks, but we do have to wrap up. Yeah, I think people should reach out to you. you clearly, You have a lot of wisdom. What I like is that you're able to take, you know, the what you learned in the larger billion dollar business and see how that applies on the smaller businesses.

00;31;23;01 - 00;31;26;07
Craig Andrews
So how should people reach you?

00;31;26;09 - 00;32;01;18
Aaron Trahan
Yeah, I think there's, two ways. one would be on LinkedIn. Would love to, would love to connect and engage. I'm constantly sharing this type of content where I'm just hoping to add as much value to my community as possible. So that would be the first way. and then to get more details on my particular approach and methodology, methodology and exactly how I help, executives and entrepreneurs and business owners, you can always go to my website, which is performance mindset coaching, eco, and yeah, and connect with me that way.

00;32;01;18 - 00;32;28;02
Aaron Trahan
And what I'd like to also offer your audience, if they are interested in reaching out. I'd like to just kind of provide a value, add that if they do want to schedule some time with me or connect, I'd be happy to walk them through, what I refer to as a performance breakthrough assessment that really covers the four key areas that best determine a leader of any shape or size, their effectiveness to getting better.

00;32;28;02 - 00;32;33;22
Aaron Trahan
So I'd like to extend that invitation out to your audience. For those that may be interested in connecting.

00;32;33;24 - 00;32;55;28
Craig Andrews
Know, I hope they take advantage of that. One thing that we tragically didn't have time to dig into is the little bit that I've learned about you is you have you believe in systems and processes, right. And I think that systems and processes are powerful. If you want predictable, repeatable results. That's right. We tragically we didn't have time to talk about that at all.

00;32;56;03 - 00;32;59;18
Craig Andrews
So I hope people do reach out to you so they can learn more about that.

00;32;59;20 - 00;33;20;10
Aaron Trahan
Yeah, that's a great it's a great statement to end it because yeah, I think focus and consistency are super powers. And if you leave it up to random or leave it up to chance, life's always going to win. If you don't have a system in place, being consistent and focusing in the right areas, you'd have better luck putting a note in the bottle and throwing it in the Gulf.

00;33;20;12 - 00;33;24;16
Craig Andrews
Yeah, where? And thanks for sharing that. And leaders and legacies.

00;33;24;18 - 00;33;27;26
Aaron Trahan
Thanks. Correct. And I appreciate it.

00;33;27;26 - 00;33;56;22
Craig Andrews
This is Craig Andrews. I want to thank you for listening to the Leaders and Legacies podcast. We're looking for leaders to share how they're making the impact beyond themselves. If that's you, please go to Alize for me.com/guest and sign up there. If you got something out of this interview, we would love you to share this episode on social media.

00;33;56;24 - 00;34;20;06
Craig Andrews
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00;34;20;08 - 00;36;30;22
Craig Andrews
Please go ahead and subscribe your thumbs up! Ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show. It means a lot to me. It means a lot to my team. If you want to know more, please go to Alize for me.com. or follow me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.