Great Leaders Know When to Say Yes and When to Say No with Doug Thorpe

Leadership isn't just about making decisions—it's about knowing exactly when to say yes, when to say no, and having the confidence to stand by those choices. In this thought-provoking conversation with executive coach Doug Thorpe, we explore the transformative journey from individual contributor to strategic leader, uncovering the hidden challenges that emerge when subject matter experts assume management roles.

Doug shares fascinating insights from his unique background as both a licensed pilot and former military officer, drawing surprising parallels between flight training and leadership development. He explains why being promoted among peers creates immediate psychological hurdles, and why sometimes joining a new company as a manager can actually be easier than climbing the ranks internally.

The most powerful revelation comes when Doug distinguishes between the science of leadership (data, analysis, spreadsheets) and the art of leadership (reading the market, trusting instinct). Through compelling real-world examples—from a bank chairman's counterintuitive decision to delay ATM implementation to Chick-fil-A's unwavering commitment to Sunday closure despite Wall Street criticism—we see how strategic patience and values-driven leadership create distinctive competitive advantages.

Whether you're a new team leader struggling to manage former colleagues, a director transitioning from tactical execution to strategic thinking, or a C-suite executive balancing growth with core values, this episode offers invaluable wisdom for navigating your leadership journey. Connect with Doug at headwayexec.com or explore his podcast "Leadership Powered by Common Sense" to continue developing your leadership toolkit.

https://dougthorpe.com/

https://headwayexec.com/

https://podcasts.dougthorpe.com/

Sponsored by Nico Van de Venne CommV

Chapters

• 0:24 Great Leaders and Decision Making
• 3:43 Pilot Experience and Leadership Training
• 4:58 From Subject Matter Expert to Manager
• 15:12 Joining a Company as a New Manager
• 24:43 The Evolution to Strategic Thinking
• 32:19 Executive Decision-Making and the Art of Leadership
• 35:25 Values-Based Leadership in Action
• 42:54 Final Thoughts and Contact Information

Transcript

Doug: 0:00

The quick answer is that becomes the measure of a good leader. Great leaders aren't afraid to make that decision. They're going to take in the information, but they're going to know the moment and they're going to be able to have almost impeccable timing for saying yes or no. Yes, we're going to do this. No, we can't do that. Saying yes or no, yes, we're going to do this no, we can't do that. Or they might, in some cases, send it back for a re-review with certain guidance and instruction.

Nico: 0:43

Let me invite you to sit back, drop your jaw, tongue and shoulders, take a deep breath and, if you wish, close your eyes for a moment and feel the beat within. In a few seconds, you just jumped from your head to your heart and felt the beat within opening up to receive even more value and fulfillment out of your business and life. And today's episode. I'm your host, nico van de Venne, confidant to successful CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs striving to achieve everlasting fulfillment. Now, before we dive into today's episode, I have a small request. If you find value in our podcast, please take a moment to subscribe, rate it, give us a five-star review and your feedback helps us to create an even more interesting episode so it also reaches out to more listeners and we can continue bringing these amazing contents to you. So share this episode with at least one person that you know that you might think that they might be interested, so that we can create a nice community. So thank you for your support.

Nico: 1:50

In any case, let's get started. First, let me introduce to you our next speaker, doug Thorpe. Doug is a business advisor and executive coach for company's owners and busy executives. For 20 years plus, he has helped entrepreneurs and executives find better ways to grow their business, achieving better results and win in life. Welcome to the Everlasting Fulfillment Podcast, doug. Welcome to the show.

Doug: 2:20

Thank you, nico. It's a pleasure to be here. I know it's taken us a bit to get this organized and set up, but uh, I I'm sure it'll be a good one, looking forward to our discussion absolutely yeah, the holidays and all that beautiful stuff you know comes by and then schedules start getting a little bit blown up as well.

Nico: 2:39

Yeah, no, that's perfectly fine. First off, you mentioned you're a licensed pilot. How does that link with your executive coaching and supporting entrepreneurs? Tell us about that.

Doug: 2:54

Well, interesting intro section. I can't say I've ever been asked that question right off the top. Off the top, the experience of getting a pilot's license does involve some intense training and development before you ever really get to sit in the seat behind the stick on the aircraft. And I think it's a safe thing to correlate with leadership development. You ought to prepare yourself for that with some form of training, whether it's through mentoring or more formalized schooling, before you try to take on that first role and responsibility as a manager or a leader in a business. And um, sadly for many of us it doesn't get to happen that way. You come out of school, you go to work, you're an individual contributor, but you get recognized for great contribution and management above you says we're going to make you a team leader. Poof, you're the manager now. And then the story begins.

Nico: 4:08

Yeah, that's, recognizable.

Doug: 4:12

Happens every time.

Nico: 4:14

Yeah, happens every day. Sometimes it's like what I've recently been bringing out. There is that a lot of subject matter experts. They get promoted from the team into a management role and they're they one thing. They leave a hole behind in the team because the expertise leaves and they get on a new role and they have to add that management role onto their subject matter expert role. So what's your experience with that? And now, how do you advise people on that level?

Doug: 4:50

Well, you're 100% right, that's exactly the way it happens. And again I go back to my analogy that you know, sole contributor is identified as the best producer on the team. You know whether that's best accountant, best engineer, best worker, best technical expert, data analyst, on and on and on. And they're working in a team of like kind skill sets, but they're designated as the better performer out of the group. So there's this logic that says well, we'll make them the team leader.

Doug: 5:25

And usually those first appointments do involve continuing your own commitment to individual contribution as well as leading the team around you. So one of the first immediate challenges is often the idea that you just got elevated among your peer group, all the people that you used to go out to happy hour with or have lunch with. Now they are, you know and I'm using air quotes here your employees. And that creates the often first stumbling block for that newly appointed manager is how do you shift gears? How do you, how do you become that point of designated authority over someone that has been a longtime friend, not just colleague but friend at work? And you know you have to start making that separation and moving forward. But if, if I can fast forward on this track.

Doug: 6:26

What happens is so the person that's thrust into that role has continuing success, let's just say that. And they get recognized again. Maybe it's a year, maybe it's two years later, but again they're tapped to say, well, you did real good as that team leader. Now we're going to make you head of the department and now you've got three or four teams of like kind that you're responsible for and you get on this sort of a gerbil wheel of expectation in your own mind. You're saying, well, I did okay with the people part of things. I got promoted, but I also know I was recognized for my contribution of the work we did. So now I'm going to double down on the work effort and after about that second or third promotion you start hearing people talk about burnout. You know it's like I can't still produce a hundred widgets a day and do all the people management responsibilities I've got and there's this tug and pull of conflict that starts to emerge.

Nico: 7:39

True, true personal experience. I've I've had the opportunity to switch companies where I came into a leadership role at the point where you're not the individual contributor being promoted but you're actually taking on the role and and function as a leader or manager. Do you see a big difference between those two situations? What would you do if somebody would come into a company and they take over a role from somebody that's previous there and and they are, you know, the manager who comes in? What do you see as the big differences there?

Doug: 8:17

well, oddly enough, I I would almost argue that that scenario is easier to pull off than being that guy that is perpetually promoted up in the original organization. It's almost easier to come in and be hired as a manager because the people on the team, the employees around you, they don't know you as a colleague, they don't know you as a peer equal, maybe age-wise, they determine that you're the same age or maybe even, in a lot of cases nowadays, you're younger than the people that are going to work for you. But nonetheless, you get a little bit of a grace period there, kind of a free pass while people wait and see how you're going to. You think you want to be and the question is, literally, how are you going to show up every day? You know whether that's attitude, whether that's demeanor, whether that's tone posture, whether that's tone posture, practice, all the things. It's particularly important in your scenario where I'm moving companies and I'm going to show up on day one at the new company. Well, you got to start on day one being that guy, that persona of the leader that you really want to be. You can't wait for that to come together. You can't try a few things test this, test that, tinker with it, because that just creates chaos and confusion for the people around you.

Doug: 10:15

And you know, I tell the story back in the day when I was a young lieutenant in the army, I got assigned to report to this uh Colonel who was, um, you know, three-time Vietnam tour vet and a really gruff, grizzly guy and notorious for being just a mean spirited, almost wicked kind of leader. But you know, I approached it with the idea, you know, I'm going to give him some grace. I don't, I've heard the stories but I'm going to, I'm going to wait on my own experiences to make the call. But, conversely, whatever he turns out to be, I'm not going to let it bother me. And he and I ended up and he was gruff, he was, he was real short tempered, umtempered, but I got to where I just we had a great relationship because I just effectively kind of saw through all that bluster and noise and just stayed focused on the work we needed to do.

Doug: 11:20

And you know, if I had a data fact in my hand that I knew was contrary to what he was saying or where he was going, I just respectfully but firmly stood my ground, you know, and he respected that. So he, he demanded a lot but he gave a lot, and people, after about a year I'd worked for this guy People said how do you get along with him? You just you guys seem to have this amazing chemistry, but he's not any different than he's always been and I said no hell again, number one, I don't let it bother me, I don't. You know, that's the style he's chosen and I'm going to accept it. I'm not going to let it be an issue.

Nico: 12:03

Yeah, it does give a certain different dynamic to the situation. But to come to that point, you must have gone through some experiences that got you to the point where you're saying you know, I'll just let this water like a shower flow over me and it doesn't bother me. And doesn't bother me In some essence, you're probably going to sometimes, you know, swear behind a corner and say he's got his head on today. I don't want to, you know. But then you come back and you know, streak, face them and continue. Is that the case? Did you have experiences?

Doug: 12:39

Yeah, in fairness, yes, that was the case. My, you know, my own prior training had. Own prior training was the equivalent of I mean there were chapters I should say in my training of the equivalent of being a prisoner of war and how to endure that and how to survive under those very austere conditions, and I won't elaborate on all the rest of it. But yeah, I mean, I mean I'd had some experiential training and I realized that it. You know, everything in life falls out on a spectrum one way or another. When you really think about it, there's a high and a low, or a good and a bad. And, um, if, if, you can learn how to look at the world that way, uh, I'll give you a very specific example of that.

Doug: 13:30

My college roommate was a career military guy. He retired as a brigadier general. He had a very significant leadership role in the U? S Gulf war. He, he was deputy commander of third infantry that took over Baghdad and captured Saddam Hussein.

Doug: 13:47

So when all that was over, I was at his house one night and we were having dinner and, um, I said to him Bill, you, you strike me, you are the most calm. Your, your aura of calm is just almost overwhelming. You know it's like for all that you've been through and I can only imagine and he had not divulged a lot of detail to me, but you know it was war and I could only imagine. I said how do you have that calm and demeanor? And he grinned a little bit and he said, doug, I learned two things along the way.

Doug: 14:32

There's two fundamental questions Is my family safe? Question number one and question number two is is any or anybody around me dying? If, if the answers to those questions are yes and no, I'm good. You know, else is way out on the spectrum somewhere and I don't need to get worked up. I don't need to get upset, I don't need to be, you know, over the top with my solution. He said obviously, if the answer to those questions are different, then yeah, I'm going to be in a different gear, I'm going to be operating in a whole different way, but for the majority of life that I'm living now, you know those questions the answers are yes and no. Yes, my family's safe. No, nobody around me's dying, so I'm good yeah, it's a.

Nico: 15:18

It's a little bit extreme for the day-to-day life, I would say, but but it kind of it, kind of my idea, brings it back to to the circle of influence and the circle of concern, where, at some point you are, you have the the possibility to know or to act on, for instance, your breathing. That's something that you can control, that's something that you can do something about. Your heart rate is a bit different. That doesn't your, your subconscious that manages that. But if it's storming outside, there's nothing you can do about it. So that's the circle of concern and you just can't do anything about it.

Nico: 15:54

And if you listen to those two questions a bit extreme, like I said, but they kind of relate to what do you really have influence on or what do you act upon, and it kind of comes down to values as well. What's the biggest priority in your life? You know, if somebody's dying, of course close by, if it's a family member, it's even, you know, 10 points up. But is your experience because it's 20 years plus in your experience as as coach, as executive support, what is the thing that makes, um, let's say, a person, individual contributor that gets his promotions up to a certain point and what's the tipping point of becoming a real executive, I would say borderline, c-level. What's the point that you've existed?

Doug: 16:48

Well, I actually do a lot of work in that space. A lot of my executive coaching clients are right on the edge of that shift in their careers. Maybe they classically in today's modern business lingo, maybe they classically in today's modern business lingo it typically shows up at the so-called director level or senior director, and then ultimately you know vice president and more formal officer titles. But and then in that director, senior director kind of role, what you hear a lot of is that the discussions are less about tactical execution. You know what's our volume today? How many widgets did we deliver today? It's less about that and more about the bigger picture or, as everybody calls it, strategy thinking.

Doug: 17:43

Strategic thinking what's our strategy for the bigger picture? Where are we going to need to go tomorrow or next year? And again in the evolution of an individual career path. It's that inflection point where you start hearing the people above you talk about strategy rather than execution. Where you start hearing the people above you talk about strategy rather than execution. And not that they've given up on execution, by no means, but they've delegated that they know that people in lower ranks in the organization are going to deliver and they're accountable for that delivery.

Doug: 18:19

But in the leadership rooms or meetings, the talk is much more about bigger picture strategy. You know, oh, did you see what our competitor announced today? Or did you hear what the market did to us? Or, you know, did you hear about this new discovery of technology that we're going to have to now explore, of technology that we're going to have to now explore? All of those elements have a far longer term impact and become more strategic in the direction the business is going to go and therefore the individual leader needs to expand that lens and they need to start developing that bigger picture thinking. It's not so much nose down but it's head up and um. That's the shift that, again, most people on the traditional career path has struggled to make yeah, yeah, absolutely it's.

Nico: 19:18

It's in my experience that I've had very big teams. So right now, at this point, I'm about 18 people around that that have indirect report to me. So there's two people, two persons, who directly report to me and then they have their team. And in the past when I've noticed this, when I had, it was with IBM and I was a senior project manager. So I had a team that worked for customers, where we did continuous projects, one after the other, for one or two customers, and we had a team of about 300 people in India and I had one contact person there managed the whole team.

Nico: 19:59

So I came to a point where I not no longer, indeed, managing schedules and budgets and all that stuff, but we were looking at, okay, what's going to be the next step and the next project that's going to come on, and one, one thing that I did learn in project management is you are no longer actually executing, you are. You're like you said. The strategy is so much more important to know what's the next five steps. Um, then, then, and something that I've I've been a gamer for years and that's one of the things that I love about about a lot of these games where you start to use strategies to go to the next level. Um, and it's not, you know, just shoot the bad guys and then you go to the next level. It's more of okay, if we move to that room, what's the effect going to be when the enemy comes in, and all that.

Nico: 20:52

So I think that's probably something that you kind of learn, but there's not a lot. I'm gonna skip to another thing. There's not a lot of countries anymore that have mandatory military training. They have schools and then they go to, you know, either university or something like that. But strategic thinking in in that element is completely different. When you look at it from a military point of view, when you're talking about human lives, the load of that strategic thinking is completely different, as well than a financial-based thinking, and I don't know if what your experience is in that area you know the difference between working in a military environment against an executive or a corporate environment.

Doug: 21:37

Yeah, I think there are a lot of corollaries and a lot of metaphors that do fit. I mean, I had a discussion with someone a while back and we were talking about the pros and cons of trying to apply military metaphor in modern business and the conclusion I think that we came away with at the end of our discussion was it it's, it's tricky and it's risky to go too far down that path. While some of them are perfectly right, you know just the basic idea of you open up the building for the new day and you say we're going to war.

Doug: 22:21

Well no, you're not Typical subject.

Doug: 22:27

Yeah, you're going to have some challenges, you're going to have some tasks, you're going to have some obligations and responsibilities that have to get resolved. But you know again, when you extend the metaphor all the way to its end, whether you win or lose, there's going to be casualties along the way. And are you really going to war today? I don't think so. You know so, um. But that said, you know, there there definitely still some thinking and, and to your original point, the idea of of being able to think about strategy and and moving large elements of your business down the, the future path, uh, is what you know. Strategic design, strategic planning and thinking is all about. It's like if you anticipate something happening. I'll give you another quick example.

Doug: 23:29

After my military days, I went to work in banking, and I'm aging myself now. But when I first started in banking, we didn't have ATMs. You couldn't get cash out of a machine. You had to go to the bank and talk to a teller, um, but while I was there, all of that, technology came online and everything, all the inventions had been deployed, or at least the first versions of the machines and the technology, and our immediate closest competitor, bank, had gone headlong into ATM delivery because their strategy they were predominantly a retail bank, which means, in banking terms, retail is consumer banking. You know, checkbooks, savings accounts, car loans, home loans, boat loans, all those things for the individuals. We, on the other hand, were more of a commercial bank. We banked businesses. Now, we had banking products for the owners and employees of those businesses, but that wasn't our primary target market.

Doug: 24:35

We were after the businesses themselves, and so we had an internal team of planners and analysis put this study together about the use of ATMs and they made this big pitch to our chairman and I was sitting in the room. I still remember it vividly. It was about an hour-long presentation and the recommendation was we need this to compete. If nothing else, it's a defensive strategy. If we don't have it, they're all going to go somewhere else. Blah, blah, blah. And our chairman shook his head and said nope, I get it, I know we need it. One day we will have it, but not today. He said I'm going to let the other guys suffer the pains, the growth pains, of perfecting this technology and then at another day we will revisit this. Well, the other day was two years later.

Doug: 25:28

A full two years went by and sure enough we were hearing horror stories of the pains and trouble they were going through to try to make this happen. Because all the machines were available. The backbone network for connecting the machines did not exist. All machines were hardwired into bank locations. That wiring had to go to the computer at the bank. The computer may or may not talk to other computers elsewhere in the banking system. None of the backside infrastructure had been developed and that became the glaring hole in the process of delivering that service. So two years went by, we revisited this subject and we saw wildly obvious was the opportunity to not so much worry about placing the machines, but we wanted to build the super highway to connect everything and we did. We formed a subsidiary company, we got a consortium of other banks to invest in it and we ran the backbone that connected about a dozen different bank brands. Okay, and we made millions of dollars doing that.

Nico: 26:50

I couldn't imagine that must've been a golden ticket.

Doug: 26:54

And uh, for those that are old enough, you might remember, in the early days of ATMs they had stamps on the outside of the machine. They would tell you which network they were part of. It was pulse and switch. And uh, there were two others and I'm drawing a blank but that told you whether or not your card for you from your bank, was going to be able to talk to that machine and get you money. Because if your bank wasn't part of one of those switches, you you couldn't. That machine was deaf and dumb talking to your card.

Doug: 27:29

So it was very vital to have that back-end infrastructure and our bank drove that innovation and, like I said, it was a two-year delay. We didn't skip a beat as far as our primary market. In fact, we continued. We were in a growth mode and we continued to grow over those two years. And then, all of a sudden, it was prime for us to plug in and install ATMs in our locations, because not only could we support it with stellar quality delivery, but now it was a low-cost option to us to put it in and make it available to all our customers.

Nico: 28:12

Yeah, yeah. Well, you talked about the presentation and the executive. That was there.

Nico: 28:22

I work with a lot of people that are at a high level in their company. They might be the owner or a ceo, and when you talked about the decision that they made, usually these things are, you know, weighed off and a lot of arguments go on and this and that, but at the end of the day it's like supreme commander of an army they need to take the decisions. What's your personal experience with people that are in those positions and they need to take decisions on their own? And usually they come from between the second layer, let's say, where they used to have colleagues that supported them. But now, at this point, they become a C-level, a CEO or founder, and then they need to take these decisions. What the effect is on that person? What's your experience in that?

Doug: 29:10

Well, the quick answer is that becomes the measure of a good leader. You know, great leaders aren't afraid to make that decision. You know they're going to take in the information, but they're going to know the moment and they're going to be able to have almost impeccable timing for saying yes or no. You know, yes, we're going to do this. No, we can't do that. Or they might, in some cases, send it back for a re-review with certain guidance and instruction. And great leaders do that very skillfully, very artfully and very wise. You know it'll pan out.

Doug: 29:56

Back to my example. You know, our chairman was a legend in the banking world at the time, was a legend in the banking world at the time and he just had this golden touch for making those kinds of decisions. And sometimes, oftentimes, it was contrary to what the group think told him. Group had gotten together and said we need these machines, we need to go forward quickly, we're falling behind, we're already behind, we need to keep. You know, we need to catch up, we need to keep going. And he went. Nope, two years and, um, you know, uh, it, it, it is the.

Doug: 30:36

Well, this is a good example of what I call the difference between the art and science of being a leader. Science tells you give me the data, let me do the spreadsheet, let me read the analysis, all right. Data tells me you know we need to go, we need to make a left turn here at Albuquerque. You know that's what we need to do.

Doug: 30:58

The art is when you can read the room or or the or. You can read the market and you have that almost some people call it the gut feel. No, this is right or that's wrong, and you can apply that and you're not afraid to apply that. You're not going to get hung up on the hunger for data. You're going to apply that less tangible sense and sensibility about it. Now, a lot of that obviously does come from years of experience and in making potentially wrong calls early on, but it's the constant and perpetual learning about your effectiveness as a leader that develops those skill sets and gives you that confidence in that gut feel that says no, this is the right thing to do. Here's where we're going to go. Yeah.

Nico: 31:55

I think that's one of the most difficult things to define in leadership. It's like you said. It's not about the numbers anymore at some point. It's not about all the basic standard information that you can get, even though there's a lot of companies that you know green light everything or yellow light everything in excel sheets, while you know the floor is burning and the people are running around without without a head like chickens without a head.

Nico: 32:22

Um which information does not come to higher leadership at a as at a good time? But if you're a good leader, you understand that there's a lot more going on than people are showing you because they, you know, put a veil in in front of whatever, whatever they're presenting to you. If, if I understand this person that you were talking about, he did not resist change or he did not have a resistance to scaling or anything like that. It's just that good common sense of saying not right now. We don't want to be the first one to shoot the gun. We're going to use the revised version that has leveled up by the experience of the others or has been shot a couple of times before.

Doug: 33:08

And the ability to have that kind of artful sense about your decision-making, I think is directly correlated with your ability, as a leader, to have shaped the vision and values of the business. And I'll give you a quick example that comes to mind. You know, the restaurant chain Chick-fil-A is famous for closing on Sunday. Well, that's a value that the founder baked in from day one to the business.

Doug: 33:42

He was a man of faith. His Bible told him you don't work on Sundays, so our business is not going to work on Sunday. And if you're an employee you might be willing to work on Sunday because your personal values are a little different. But he said nope, as a company we're not going to do that. And of course, wall street beat him up immediately. You know immediately when that announcement was made.

Doug: 34:10

And um, they said are you nuts? You're closing intentionally for 52 days a year. You know what are you? What about all the volume you're going to lose over that? Well, he, he unwavered and said nope, nope, that that's who we are and that's what we're going to do. It'll be what it will be and we're going to be okay with that. And you know, kind of, as I say, the rest is history. You know it's one of the most successful franchise chains of its kind because there are many other things that happen that make up and you know they still. I haven't looked at the numbers lately, but Chick-fil-A, on one of the metrics of food chains, the dollar volume per square foot that they produce is at the top of the chart everywhere and that's measured against the companies that are open on Sunday.

Nico: 35:09

Yeah, yeah.

Nico: 35:11

Goes to show what a little decision can make as a difference. Uh, you know if, if customers know that this is the situation and that's the value of a, of a, of a chain or anything like that, they might even have more respect for it than they would say just open up on Sunday. I think there's. Isn't there a soda can that has remained 99 cents forever as well, by likewise a decision that the owner said from the beginning we're keeping it at 99 cents because everybody should be able to buy this drink. It's something like that as well, which made it also popular. I read it recently. I'm in Europe, so for us it's kind of different as a perspective.

Doug: 36:00

I'm not familiar specifically with that example, but yeah, that would be the concept, that whole statement of value and who the leaders want the company to be. And, um, um, I've got another quick example I can share. This is on a lower scale. I know a, um, an entrepreneurial owner of a construction company in Florida and they're a good size company but they build these um, kind of tilt wall, service center type buildings, warehouse, uh, docks, delivery things and uh, you know, they do 40 or $50 million a year, pretty good size company of its kind. And I was talking to him and I said let's talk about vision and values. What, what's the hallmark value of your company? And he said, oh, it's real simple. He said we do the right thing. And at first I kind of went yeah, come on, what is that? What does?

Nico: 37:05

that really mean.

Doug: 37:06

And he said no fair question. He said I'll give you an example. He said in construction it's common knowledge, the whole industry believes this If we've got a project and we make a mistake, we're going to correct it. But whatever it costs us to do the correction, it gets baked into another part of the project so that we still make our money and it gets billed to the customer one way or another. In another area he said in my world, doing the right things is we don't do that. If we make a mistake, we eat it. If we have to, you know, re-dig a trench and pour new concrete, whatever it costs to do that, that's on us. We made the mistake, we're going to fix it and it'll be right, but we're not going to charge you for it and I'll show you. I'll show you the numbers, we'll, we'll. You'll be able to see the numbers.

Doug: 38:04

And he said over time what that has afforded us. He said we're not the cheapest bidders on a job. But our customers who have been with us a while know what we're doing and they believe what we're doing and they appreciate the transparency and the honesty about it and they know when they get their final bill from us. There's no fluff, there's no fudge, there's no messing with the numbers to get to that final number, and people respect that, because with everybody else that does it the other way, there's always an argument at the end about the final bill. You know what do you mean. The project ran over by you know ten thousand dollars. So yeah, show me why. You know why did that happen. And there's this song and dance and a lot of noise and hurt feelings and everything he said. That never happens on any of my projects that's, that's it's like.

Nico: 39:04

It's a great thing because these days I've noticed that I've recently done some construction work here as well, which is way smaller than what you're mentioning. But, um, the, the people that I interviewed to do the work, um, together with my partner, we we have a way of going handling, uh, contractors, and we we asked specific questions, a bit like you. You just mentioned that the guy says when something goes wrong, what do you do with it? And and we asked that question to several of them, and one of them radically said I never make a problem, I never have an issue. Thank you very much for coming.

Nico: 39:46

Have a good ride home. And then this other guy who came in, he was together with his girlfriend, wife, I don't know, but they worked together and she was like oh, problems. Well, you know, first thing we'll do is is call you because we just need to let you know that something went wrong, because this is your place and we need it. And she went on like that. I was like, okay, our decision has been been made, make us an offer. We're probably going to work with you. And you're like okay, because for me, owning something and and from day one, already saying that we're owning this, and you can see the difference between, you know, doing this as a sales stock against really really telling them the truth. Um, there is a clear difference in the, in the way of acting. But indeed it's. It's beautiful to hear that there are still some people out there who have these, these rigid values that actually have impact, impact and they get their own fan club at the end when they come out of that.

Nico: 40:46

So, doug, we've talked about a lot of different things about leadership, and we actually kind of went up for the scale as well, which I like very much to scale as well which.

Nico: 40:55

I like very much. I think there might be a lot of people listening that might be interested in contacting you or looking at your materials. I know that you have a very extensive library of stuff that's out there. I've been following you for quite a while and there's a lot of interesting things that you bring out letters and your videos and so on. So how can people reach out to you? What do they do? Tell us.

Doug: 41:26

Yeah, well, I do operate two websites. One is my company name and that is Headway Exec. That's headwayexeccom is the website. That's the one that's oriented more to the entrepreneurial sector, both in terms of business acquisition or business transition. If you're an investor and you've acquired a business and working on transitioning it into your new ownership, we've got a lot of resources, both people and materials, to help with that transfer. But then also my what I call my more personal website is dougthorpecom T-H-O-R-P-Ecom. That gets into a lot more of the individual one-on-one or small group coaching that I do. Like I do a lot of leadership team type workshops off sites, things of that sort.

Doug: 42:14

It's got links to the books I've written and also links to the podcast show that you alluded to. My podcast is called Leadership Powered by Common Sense. It's available on all the streaming services and I'm all over social media, easy to find and would welcome if anybody wants to reach out and just have a chat. If you want to share a challenge you're up against now, we can talk. I might be able to solve it on the one call. Who knows. If that is, that's great, happy to do that. But if you'd like to, you know, maybe engage in another direction, do a little bit more. Happy to have that talk as well.

Nico: 42:52

Great stuff, great stuff. I will add the links as well in the show notes, so people feel free to connect from there. Doug, I want to really thank you for your time. I know you have a lot on your plate and there's a lot of stuff moving around on the other side of the pond and I hope to talk to you soon as well from the other side of the mic. In that case, we'll meet again. Thank you very much for uh for your time all right, nico.

Doug: 43:18

Thank you pleasure to be here and hope it helped absolutely.

Nico: 43:23

I think there's a lot of inspirational stuff in our in our conversation and to uh to our listeners. Thank you very much again for listening to this new episode of the everlasting podcast. Have a good one, everybody. Bye episode of the everlasting podcast. Have a good one, everybody. Bye-bye.