IAM1615 – Founder Helps Business Owners Achieve Peak Performance

Why it was selected for “CBNation Architects”: What Brad does is around helping business owners make it to the next level. So that's a core of what we are focused on and so is Brad.

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Previous Episode: https://iamceo.co/2022/03/12/iam1305-founder-helps-business-owners-achieve-peak-performance/

Transcription:

1615

Brad Tornberg Teaser 0:00

So when people ask me what is business fitness, I say we help C-level Executives and business owners achieve peak performance for both themselves and their business and that's my secret sauce.

Intro 0:13

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups and CEOs without listening to a long long long interview? If so you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is I am CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:41

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I am CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Brad Tornberg of E3 Consulting. Brad great to have you on the show.

Brad Tornberg 0:50

Great to be here Gresham, looking forward to our conversation.

Gresham Harkless  0:53

Yes I'm super excited about it as well too and hearing about all the awesome things that you're doing. Before we jump into that conversation I wanted to read a little bit more about Brad so you can hear about some of those awesome things. Brad is the founder of E3 Consulting and the author of business Fitness Revolution which is available on Amazon. He recently launched Business Fitness University a program designed for business owners, C-suite Executives and managers. Brad has provided management consulting business software selection and implementation for over 35 years. He has helped hundreds of businesses grow their profits by decreasing costs, increasing revenue, and optimizing employee and team performance. Brad super excited again to have you here on the show, are you ready to speak to the I am CEO community?

Brad Tornberg 1:34

Yes I am sir.

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Gresham Harkless  1:36

Awesome, well let's make it happen then. To kind of kick everything off I know I touched a little bit when I read your bio, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit and hear a little bit more on how you got started what I call your CEO story.

Brad Tornberg 1:46

Well, it's kind of an interesting story. I got started when I realized as a consultant that I was getting 300 dollars a day and the guy that was putting me into the market was getting fifteen hundred dollars a day. That was when I decided would I rather be the prostitute or the pimp. So you know I went out on my own with not knowing what I was going to do but I just knew that whatever it was that I was going to do, I was going to be in control of what my future was and here was my opportunity to do so.

Gresham Harkless  2:18

Nice I absolutely love that and it's so funny, it kind of reminds me, I don't know if you ever heard that video where it's like this motivational vehicle, a video where the boss is riding around in like a Tesla or something like that and the employee is really excited and is like “oh how you how'd you get that?” The boss says well if you work really hard, you come in early I'll get another one of these next year. So you start to get that realization like who you're helping and how you can start to help yourself and make those things happen.

Brad Tornberg 2:46

Exactly. I mean it's interesting because I started in this field in technology when it was just starting to come about. I mean you know you go back to my high school colleges, I was doing things on punch cards and when I first started in this business, just so you know what E3 does is we really provide business operations and Technology Consulting. That's the overall overarching umbrella, we'll talk shortly about the book and the course because that kind of led to my metamorphosis to that but you know we always work with people processing technology to develop solutions that will help them continuously improve. That's always kind of been the way that we do things, and you know people always say what is your why and I always like to say my why is because I understand both Business and Technology. There are people that understand business, there are people that understand technology, but find someone who has both of them and that was the advice I got from my dad. He was like, find  the niche between the two of them and you'll be able to make a living the rest of your life. So I did and having empathy for my clients and wanting them to succeed and having been with companies that really didn't care about the customer; just go do what you got to do, and get out of there it wasn't really jiving with me. I tend to be emotionally involved with my clients. I tend to have long-term relationships with my clients in fact some of my clients are 25-30 year clients and they come back and come back .So what's happened over the years is it started with technology and then as you start talking about someone's business needs they all of a sudden see the C-level executive of the business only realized hey you know you're a pretty smart guy you know, can you help me in this area and that's how I kind of got into the business Consulting. Everything from managing projects, to a client of mine who asked me to go to Europe and find new Distributors for him in his three largest Distributors now came through me, so everything from sales to technology to all of those things is has over the last 35-40 years has built that background of what I have.

Gresham Harkless  4:53

Nice I absolutely love that. and it seems so and I don't know if you've definitely seen this, over the years that so many times people believe there's business and there's technology and they're in their separate, silos, but I almost feel like there's convergence that every business needs that technology. So it's really hard to I think really get ahead to progress and get better without marrying the two and having an understanding about those things which I imagine is why it's been so powerful.

Brad Tornberg 5:23

All of that comes together and that's what I try to empower the business owner with. We have to establish where your focus is, but guess what you know if you think about your business and you think about your body your body can only operate at peak efficiency if all of your systems are working correctly, you don't have a broken arm, you're eating well. Well it's the same thing with your business if one system of your business is bad how can the business be operating at peak performance? So we take a look at all of those systems that are related to the business, the skeletal system, the infrastructure. Do you have a good infrastructure, do you have good systems in place, your management team; do you have a good team, where are you missing pieces? A lot of times they have wrong people in the own places so here I am going through human resource stuff with them and without a human resource background but having a common sense business background and having dealt with over 400 businesses in the last 30 or so years. So, that's kind of the outline to how I've kind of come to be where I am right now.

Gresham Harkless  6:26

Nice I absolutely love that. I appreciate you breaking that down especially that analogy or metaphor just to understand that, because anybody who’s realizing that as much as they want to go to a goal or aspiration but their health isn't in order or their skill isn't, all those aspects aren't in order it's really hard to get to where you want to be. We often and the saying is you can't pour from an empty cup. It's so important to understand the totality and the holistic aspect that we need to be able to fill up our cup so that we can show up better, so that we can ultimately do what the mission and vision of the organization is, which we can often forget about when we're trying to go from goal to goal to goal.

Brad Tornberg 7:05

Yeah plus your interpersonal relationships suffer when you're not taking care of yourself right. You get stressed out more, you start yelling and screaming, you you have impatience and all those things. So, you know teaching the executive that there are other people around him that he/she needs to be sensitive to, so it's getting their physical well-being and their mental well-being in alignment with their business well-being. That's the goal the end of the day.

Gresham Harkless 7:32

Nice I absolutely love that. Would you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce, the thing you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique? It seems like you can see the forest for the trees and understand that as I said people are sometimes busy professionals, they're go to this thing and that thing and not taking care of their foundation and making sure they do have their fitness in order so that they can be at their peak selves and their team as a result of that too.

Brad Tornberg 7:54

It is my secret sauce. I kind of stumbled upon it because I knew I wanted to get into fitness just to know it and then because I was so big in the business and the Consulting side, I kept thinking to myself there's got to be you know after I saw that one guy and I wrote that one blog article, that's when the light bulb went on that the secret sauce is combining the personal well-being so when people ask me what is business fitness I say we help c-level executives and business owners achieve peak performance for both themselves and their business and that's my secret sauce.

Gresham Harkless 8:29

Nice I love that because again, I feel like we're living in a world where it's no longer silos. There's no longer Fitness is here, relationships are here, technology here, business, it's all kind of overlapping and marrying and join where if one isn't affected just like the legs of a stool one is a little bit lower or not sharper or not as strong. The whole entire stool can topple over, so it's so important to have that ability that you have to kind of see each of those aspects and how they're intertwined and affect one another.

Brad Tornberg 9:03

It is optimizing you. It's really what it is. That's what I'm trying to do, look I've done it for myself and I know what works and I also know what it was like when I wasn't doing it for myself. I know the difference between how that feels and I also know the commitment and what it takes to do that. When when people say to me I could never get up to be at the gym at four o'clock in the morning I do that for 21 days and you know what, your body's going to automatically wake up and you're going to go because it's now a habit. That's the same thing with here, it becomes an instinct you do it when you don't go to the gym on a day you feel lousy because you missed it. There's the difference instead of saying I don't feel like going to the gym, it's like oh God! you lay in bed for 20 minutes you're like okay enough of this just get up because otherwise you're going to be miserable the whole day because you didn't go, and then you go and you feel better and then you start your day. So it's a cycle man, it's all a cycle.

Gresham Harkless 9:56

That makes so much sense. That actually might be exactly what I was going to ask which is kind of like your CEO nugget which is a little bit more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice. I usually say it might be something you would tell your favorite client or if you hopped into a time machine you might tell your younger business self. Is that where you you would land on your CEO nugget is being able to kind of be around like-minded individuals?

Brad Tornberg 10:19

Yeah that and I think the biggest thing I would tell my younger self is the power of focus. You see, when you're an entrepreneur and you're starting out and every idea is the shiny object and any way that you can make money is a shining object. But, you know to quote Dan Sullivan there's a ceiling of complexity in the beginning when you start out, you can keep working hard and making more money but after a certain point you're going to start bouncing off that ceiling. You can't do it yourself anymore. Now you have to build an organization behind them, you have to make that transition into it. When I did it, the people that I brought in I delegated everything to them including the things that I was strong at which was the mistake I made, my focus should have been on sales and being in front of the customer instead of sitting in my office with my feet up the desk saying look at how successful we are. You know how long that lasted, that was the first iteration of my basis that was the lesson that I learned about. You're not the be it all and all, you have to have some humility and you have to work every single day like it's the last day that you're gonna have your business. The focus comes from if you find that one thing that you're good at like I have now now, think about how late in life I found that focus. If I had to tell myself something younger that's what it would have been. Find your passion, make it your focus and just match forward and don't let anybody take you off your path. People are going to try to knock you off your path, just get right back on it, that's a good sign because if they knock you off your path they're showing you that the direction is different. Now it's up to you to find that direction to keep going. so yeah. I mean like someone once said to me when I'm 60 years old I wish I was 18 again with what I know now at 60 because I could be a lot wealthier. I started with a lot of guys you know who are now retired I mean the first PC Expo I did in New York and I had Bill Gates on one side of me and I had Steve Jobs on the other side of me I was the only software guy there and these guys were selling operating systems and hardware and stuff like that. That was when I had an opportunity. I was the first guy in this field and most of the people that were early in the field cashed out early but I decided I'm gonna go buy another business called duct tape marketing and now I'm going to invest in this and invest in that. I lost focus and because I lost focus I lost direction and I had to basically retool and start over again which is what I did I sold the company and then started again.

Gresham Harkless 12:53

I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote and quote CEOs on this show, so Brad what does being a CEO mean to you?

Brad Tornberg 13:02

I think you have to have a bit of an omniscient point of view whether you're all knowing or not. You have to also be a good collaborator in today's society and of course you have to have empathy and you have to practice empathy and inclusion and all of those things. I think a good CEO listens more than he talks. I think listening is a very underutilized skill with people and if it means when you hear something, saying it back to them to confirm understanding is sometimes when people don't do that. There's that gap of what you said versus what I heard so make sure that you dot your i's and cross your t's and double check anything that's out there. I think being the CEO means being a leader, means being a thought leader, it means being a people leader, it means being very empathetic to everyone and everything that's around you and it's also being charitable and being social.

Gresham Harkless  14:08

Absolutely love that definition and perspective and of course I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do now is pass you the mic so to speak just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best people can get a hold of you get a copy of the book, find out about all the awesome things that you've been working on.

Brad Tornberg 14:28

I appreciate that, my email address is btornberg@e3businessconsultants.com and my cell phone is US 732 area code 735-6429 and I've had that cellphone for 30 years so I'm not going anywhere if you want to reach me. By all means check out the book and if you're interested in the course, if you hire me as a consultant you get the course if not the course is also available and you can see that on the website www.e3businessconsultants.com.

Gresham Harkless  15:12

Awesome. Well Brad truly appreciate that to make it even easier we'll have the links and information in the show notes as well too. I love that you have been able to kind of remind us of how important that is and of course do that for your clients as well too. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Brad Tornberg 15:28

I will but let me close with this it's interesting that you just mentioned that last comment, because I've always been told my whole life about specialization to specialize and find something in focus and specialize on it. When people ask me what's your strength I tell them that I am a generalist in a specialist marketplace.

Gresham Harkless 15:46

Yes and that's extremely powerful because I think what we're seeing now is those people that are able to create those solutions are those people that are able to not just know one Silo but are able to see three, four, five, ten different silos and able to come up with a solution that can help all of those different aspects. I love that you've  you've heard that before and I think that makes perfect sense with what we've been talking about today.

Brad Tornberg 16:08

That's great Gresham. Thank you so much for your time today it was really been great talking with you and hopefully we get to do it again.

Outro 16:11

Thank you for listening to the I am CEO podcast powered by in blue 16 media, tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I am CEO is not just a phrase, It's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on Apple podcast, Spotify, Google podcast and everywhere you listen to podcasts subscribe and leave us a five star rating, this has been the I am CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr, thank you for listening.

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